Stian > Stian's Quotes

“Og engang skal hver eneste mann på jord erkjenne, at det var i ungdommen han kunne gjort alt, men ikke gjorde det. Engang skal han erkjenne den bitreste av alle sannheter: at livet ikke kan leves om igjen; at ungdom er noe som bare unge mennesker har, og som bare gamle mennesker forstår å bruke.”
― Agnar Mykle

“Laboring through a world every day more stultified, which expected salvation in codes and governments, ever more willing to settle for suburban narratives and diminished payoffs--what were the chances of finding anyone else seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?”
― Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

“She may know a little, may think of herself, face and body, as ‘pretty’… but he could never tell her all the rest, how many other living things, birds, nights smelling of grass and rain, sunlit moments of simple peace, also gather in what she is to him.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“It's always night, or we wouldn't need light.”
― Thelonious Monk

“All the time we were growing up," Frank said, "you wanted to run away and join the carnival?"
"Yes, and there I was with all o' you, right in the carnival, and didn't even know it." And he hoped he'd always be able to recall the way she laughed then.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Livet tar snart slutt likevel,
og da gjør det ikke noe at du har vært ensom og stygg og ulykkelig.”
― Kjell Askildsen, Et stort øde landskap

“One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.”
― Erich Fromm

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale