Jillian > Jillian's Quotes

“The ironist is ironical not because he does not care, but because he cares too much.”
― Randolph Bourne, The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918

“But there is a kind of poem you can call a Hawkins poem as there is a kind of chair you can call a Hawkins chair, and the object of both is to get praise, which is the confidence in yourself that you get from people whom you have succeeded in pleasing when you haven't any confidence in yourself.”
― Laura Riding Jackson, Four Unposted Letters to Catherine

“Suppose you meet me in the woods.”
― Eudora Welty

“In a threesome, there are always two exhibitionists and a voyeur.”
― Gabriela Wiener, Sexographies

“When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.”
― Augusto Monterroso

“walk on the inside away from the curb / no public displays of affection / when you call, let the phone ring twice / hang up and then dial again”
― Wanda Coleman, Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems and Stories 1968-1986

“Oh, now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now but thou now and now is thy prophet.”
― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

“You ride well, but you don't kiss nicely at all.”
― Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes

“It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, Letters to a Young Novelist

“Greatness is so aggressive, so dramatic! Don't you think it is almost bad manners?”
― Ernesto Sábato, El túnel

“I had depressing thoughts that the theme, even though I had thought of it, was better than I was as a writer. Henry James or Thomas Mann could easily write it, but not I. 'I'm thinking of writing it from the point of view of someone at the hotel who observes her,' I said, but this did not fill me with much hope. Then my friend, who is not a writer, suggested I try it from the omniscient author's point of view.”
― Patricia Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

“There comes a time in a man's life, if he is unlucky and leads a full life, when he has a secret so dirty that he knows he never will get rid of it. (Shakespeare knew this and tried to say it, but he said it just as badly as anyone ever said it. 'All the perfumes of Arabia' makes you think of all the perfumes of Arabia and nothing more. It is the trouble with all metaphors where human behavior is concerned. People are not ships, chess men, flowers, race horses, oil paintings, bottles of champagne, excrement, musical instruments or anything else but people. Metaphors are all right to give you an idea.)”
― John O'Hara, BUtterfield 8

“A little love, a little buckshot, that's how I'd say handle yourself.”
― Alice Walker, The Third Life Of Grange Copeland

“from the slave ship to the citizenship we faced a lot of bullship”
― Amiri Baraka

“You’re not user-friendly. You’re too needy. You have no social currency. You’re a freak. Without a normative side, you can’t get in. That’s it. Sorry.”
― Sarah Schulman, The Mere Future

“The world has never favored the experimental life. It despises poets, fanatics, prophets and lovers.”
― Randolph Bourne, The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918

“you have often seen in the cinema, erich, haven't you, that between extraordinary people extraordinary things like for example extraordinary love can arise. so we only have to be extraordinary and see what happens.”
― Elfriede Jelinek, Les amantes

“Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is 'nothing' out there; in making these assertions, their aim was not to deny the reality of God but to safeguard God's transcendence.”
― Karen Armstrong, The Case for God

“You are the most sleepiest man I ever seed.”
― Jean Toomer, Cane

“Let him ride a horse. He's a cowboy ain't he?”
― Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust

“How should I know why! I didn't invent human beings, Iggy.”
― Saul Bellow, The Adventures Of Augie March

“Her old thoughts were going to come in handy now, but new words would have to be made and said to fit them.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“You damn your own soul better than I ever could.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

“We classify things for the purpose of doing something to them. Any classification which does not assist manipulation is worse than useless.”
― Randolph Bourne

“I feel horrible. She doesn't
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that's just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America / The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar

“In America our radicalism is still simply amateurish and incompetent.”
― Randolph Bourne, The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918

“Those persons who refuse to act as symbols of society's folk ways, as counters in the game of society's ordaining, are outlawed.”
― Randolph Bourne, The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918

“For we do not do what we want to do, but what is easiest and most natural for us to do, and if it is easy for us to do the wrong thing, it is that that we will do.”
― Randolph Bourne, The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918

“For the secret of friendship is a mutual admiration, and it is the realization or suspicion that that admiration is lessening on one side or the other that swiftly breaks the charm.”
― Randolph Bourne, The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918

“Do not take the world too seriously, nor let too many social conventions oppress you.”
― Randolph Bourne, The Radical Will: Selected Writings 1911-1918