Neolavender123 > Neolavender123's Quotes

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  • #1
    “You should date a girl who reads.
    Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

    Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

    She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

    Buy her another cup of coffee.

    Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

    It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

    She has to give it a shot somehow.

    Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

    Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

    Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

    If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

    You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

    You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

    Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

    Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
    Rosemarie Urquico

  • #2
    Dee Lestari
    “Seindah apa pun huruf terukir, dapatkah ia bermakna apabila tak ada jeda? Dapatkan ia dimengerti jika tak ada spasi? Bukankah kita baru bisa bergerak jika ada jarak? Dan saling menyayang bila ada ruang?”
    dee, Filosofi Kopi: Kumpulan Cerita dan Prosa Satu Dekade

  • #3
    Bernard M. Baruch
    “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
    Bernard M. Baruch

  • #4
    Henry Miller
    “The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.”
    Henry Miller

  • #5
    We accept the love we think we deserve.
    “We accept the love we think we deserve.”
    Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

  • #6
    Santino Hassell
    “Freedom is not worth it without him.”
    Santino Hassell

  • #7
    I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control
    “I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
    Marilyn Monroe

  • #8
    Elbert Hubbard
    “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
    Elbert Hubbard

  • #9
    Maya Angelou
    “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
    Maya Angelou

  • #10
    Madeline Miller
    “I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
    Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

  • #11
    Madeline Miller
    “Name one hero who was happy."
    I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
    "You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
    "I can't."
    "I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
    "Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
    "I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
    "Why me?"
    "Because you're the reason. Swear it."
    "I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
    "I swear it," he echoed.
    We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
    "I feel like I could eat the world raw.”
    Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

  • #12
    Hermann Hesse
    “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
    Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

  • #13
    Jean Baudrillard
    “And so art is everywhere, since artifice is at the very heart of reality. And so art is dead, not only because its critical transcendence is gone, but because reality itself, entirely impregnated by an aesthetic which is inseparable from its own structure, has been confused with its own image. Reality no longer has the time to take on the appearance of reality. It no longer even surpasses fiction: it captures every dream even before it takes on the appearance of a dream.”
    Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (Semiotext

  • #14
    Taylor Jenkins Reid
    “People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is 'you're safe with me'- that's intimacy.”
    Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

  • #15
    Yoshihiro Togashi
    “You should enjoy the little detours to the fullest. Because that's where you'll find the things more important than what you want.”
    Yoshihiro Togashi, Hunter x Hunter, Vol. 32

  • #16
    “Even if that thing makes you very uncomfortable at times. Even if
    that thing puts a lot of pressure on you. Even if that thing is very stressful.
    Sometimes it’s just nice to feel good at something.”
    Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

  • #17
    Warsan Shire
    “My alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude.”
    Warsan Shire

  • #18
    Warsan Shire
    HOME

    no one leaves home unless
    home is the mouth of a shark
    you only run for the border
    when you see the whole city running as well

    your neighbors running faster than you
    breath bloody in their throats
    the boy you went to school with
    who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
    is holding a gun bigger than his body
    you only leave home
    when home won’t let you stay.

    no one leaves home unless home chases you
    fire under feet
    hot blood in your belly
    it’s not something you ever thought of doing
    until the blade burnt threats into
    your neck
    and even then you carried the anthem under
    your breath
    only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
    sobbing as each mouthful of paper
    made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

    you have to understand,
    that no one puts their children in a boat
    unless the water is safer than the land
    no one burns their palms
    under trains
    beneath carriages
    no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
    feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
    means something more than journey.
    no one crawls under fences
    no one wants to be beaten
    pitied

    no one chooses refugee camps
    or strip searches where your
    body is left aching
    or prison,
    because prison is safer
    than a city of fire
    and one prison guard
    in the night
    is better than a truckload
    of men who look like your father
    no one could take it
    no one could stomach it
    no one skin would be tough enough

    the
    go home blacks
    refugees
    dirty immigrants
    asylum seekers
    sucking our country dry
    niggers with their hands out
    they smell strange
    savage
    messed up their country and now they want
    to mess ours up
    how do the words
    the dirty looks
    roll off your backs
    maybe because the blow is softer
    than a limb torn off

    or the words are more tender
    than fourteen men between
    your legs
    or the insults are easier
    to swallow
    than rubble
    than bone
    than your child body
    in pieces.
    i want to go home,
    but home is the mouth of a shark
    home is the barrel of the gun
    and no one would leave home
    unless home chased you to the shore
    unless home told you
    to quicken your legs
    leave your clothes behind
    crawl through the desert
    wade through the oceans
    drown
    save
    be hunger
    beg
    forget pride
    your survival is more important

    no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
    saying-
    leave,
    run away from me now
    i dont know what i’ve become
    but i know that anywhere
    is safer than here”
    Warsan Shire

  • #19
    Desmond Tutu
    “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
    Desmond Tutu

  • #20
    Hanya Yanagihara
    “Lately, he had been wondering if codependence was such a bad thing. He took pleasure in his friendships, and it didn’t hurt anyone, so who cared if it was codependent or not? And anyway, how was a friendship any more codependent than a relationship? Why was it admirable when you were twenty-seven but creepy when you were thirty-seven? Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honoured by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.”
    Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

  • #21
    Taylor Jenkins Reid
    “Did Billy’s actions really warrant the song? Probably not. I mean, no. They didn’t. But that’s the thing. Art doesn’t owe anything to anyone.
    Songs are about how it felt, not the facts. Self-expression is about what it feels to live, not whether you had any right to claim any emotion at any time. Did I have a right to be mad at him? Did he do anything wrong? Who cares! Who cares? I hurt. So I wrote about it.”
    Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

  • #22
    Taylor Jenkins Reid
    “I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it's not faith, right?”
    Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

  • #23
    Taylor Jenkins Reid
    “Passion is...it's fire. And fire is great, man. But we're made of water. Water is how we keep living. Water is what we need to survive.”
    Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

  • #24
    Hanya Yanagihara
    “He would be hurt again and again—everyone was—but if he was going to try, if he was going to be alive, he had to be tougher, he had to prepare himself, he had to accept that this was part of the bargain of life itself.”
    Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

  • #25
    Ha-Joon Chang
    “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
    Ha-Joon Chang, Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

  • #26
    Steven Levitsky
    “Democracies may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany. More often, though, democracies erode slowly, in barely visible steps.”
    Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die

  • #27
    Steven Levitsky
    “One of the great ironies of how democracies die is that the very defense of democracy is often used as a pretext for its subversion. Would-be autocrats often use economic crises, natural disasters, and especially security threats—wars, armed insurgencies, or terrorist attacks—to justify antidemocratic measures.”
    Steven Levitsky, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future

  • #28
    Arthur Schopenhauer
    “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
    Arthur Schopenhauer , Studies in Pessimism: The Essays

  • #29
    “It’s not enough to be friendly. You have to be a friend.”
    R.J. Palacio, Wonder

  • #30
    “The best way to measure how much you've grown isn't by inches or the number of laps you can now run around the track, or even your grade point average-- though those things are important, to be sure. It's what you've done with your time, how you've chosen to spend your days, and whom you've touched this year. That, to me, is the greatest measure of success.”
    R.J. Palacio, Wonder



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