Sørina > Sørina's Quotes

“The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.”
― William Butler Yeats

“When a newspaper posed the question, “What’s Wrong with the World?” the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response: “Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus.”
― Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“It's the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.”
― Marlene Dietrich

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Humans, as a rule, don't like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode.

Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“A paradox: The things you don’t need to live—books, art, cinema, wine, and so on—are the things you need to live.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“So love is about finding the right person to hurt you?”
“Pretty much.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Dogs are geniuses of loyalty. And that is a good kind of genius to have.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Martin was one of those people for whom a good book before sleep is something to look forward to all day. Such a person, upon happening to recall, amidst routine occupations, that on his bedside table a book is waiting for him, in perfect safety, feels a surge of inexpressible happiness.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Glory

“Why do so many of us have to lead such strangely shaped lives?”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 Book 1

“Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a come losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. It’s all very painful – as painful as actually being cut with a knife.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“We can only cope with the dangers of language if we recognize that language is by nature magical and therefore highly dangerous.”
― Owen Barfield, History in English Words

“...library terror - that feeling of being hopelessly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of available books...”
― Owen Barfield, Night Operation

“The best conversations are with yourself. At least there's no risk of a misunderstanding.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“He was a man of very few words, and as it was impossible to talk, one had to keep silent. It’s hard work talking to some people, most often males. I have a Theory about it. With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts. The Person beset by this Ailment becomes taciturn and appears to be lost in contemplation. He develops an interest in various Tools and machinery, and he’s drawn to the Second World War and the biographies of famous people, mainly politicians and villains. His capacity to read novels almost entirely vanishes; testosterone autism disturbs the character’s psychological understanding.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges. On a Wednesday in January, at seven in the morning, it’s plain to see that the world was not made for Man, and definitely not for his comfort or pleasure.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“I am convinced that God allows our spouses, jobs, and friends to disappoint us on purpose when we start looking to them instead of through them. He loves us too much to let us worship anything but him.”
― Laurie Krieg, An Impossible Marriage: What Our Mixed-Orientation Marriage Has Taught Us About Love and the Gospel

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“Reading lets us live in someone else’s shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Reading should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“But Twitter is real life; it's realer than real life, because that is the realm that the social economy of publishing exists on, because the industry has no alternative.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“I need to create. It is a physical urge, a craving, like breathing, like eating; when it’s going well, it’s better than sex, and when it’s not, I can’t take pleasure in anything else.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“I wonder if that’s the final, obscure part of how publishing works: if the books that become big do so because at some point everyone decided, for no good reason at all, that this would be the title of the moment.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface