Vanja > Vanja's Quotes

“Bismilahir-rahmanir-rahim!
I call to witness the ink, the quill, and the script,
which flows from the quill;
I call to witness the faltering shadows of the sinking evening,
the night and all she enlivens;
I call to witness the moon when she waxes, and the sunrise when it dawns.
I call to witness the Resurrection Day and the soul that accuses itself;
I call to witness time, the beginning and end of all things - to witness that every man always suffers loss.”
― Meša Selimović, Death and the Dervish

“If we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.”
― Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

“people can die of mere imagination”
― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.”
― Raymond Carver

“It ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we're talking about when we talk about love.”
― Raymond Carver

“He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her.”
― Raymond Carver, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?

“The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.”
― Henry James, The Wings of the Dove: Authoritative Text, the Author and the Novel, Criticism

“It's time to start living the life you've imagined.”
― Henry James

“My idea is this, that when you only love a little you’re naturally not jealous-or are only jealous also a little, so that it doesn’t matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you’re in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. When however you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all – whey then you’re beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.”
― Henry James, The Golden Bowl

“Love is a cliff,
A clear, cold curve of stone, mottled by stars,
Smirched by the morning, carved by the dark sea
Till stars and dawn and waves can slash no more,
Till the rock’s heart is found and shaped again.”
― James Wright, The Green Wall