Talie Helene > Talie's Quotes

“As a writer you slant all evidence in favor of the conclusions you want to produce and you rarely tilt in favor of the truth. ...This is what a writer does: his life is a maelstrom of lying. Embellishment is his focal point. This is what we do to please others. This is what we do in order to flee ourselves. A writer's physical life is basically one of stasis, and to combat this constraint, an opposite world and another self have to be constructed daily. ...the half world of a writer's life encourages pain and drama, and defeat is good for art: if it was day we made it night, if it was love we made it hate, serenity becomes chaos, kindness became viciousness, God became the devil, a daugher became a whore. I had been inordinately rewarded for participating in this process, and lying often leaked from my writing life--an enclosed sphere of consciousness, a place suspended outside of time, where the untruths flowed onto the whiteness of a blank screen--into the part of me that was tactile and alive.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“XX

A learned man came to me once.
He said, "I know the way, - come."
And I was overjoyed at this.
Together we hastened,
Soon, too soon, were we
Where my eyes were useless,
And I knew not the ways of me feet.
I clung to the hand of my friend;
But at last he cried, "I am lost.”
― Stephen Crane

“In the Desert

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;

“But I like it
“Because it is bitter,
“And because it is my heart.”
― Stephen Crane, The Black Riders and Other Lines

“The knife to heart is always a surprise;
it isn't the fashion to name evil
or forever bind a liar to their lies.”
― Talie Helene

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski

“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”
― Mark Twain

“I like the way Mahler wandered about in his music and still retained his
passion. He must have looked like an
earthquake walking down the street.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

“The world is full of ghosts, and some of them are still people.”
― Peter Straub, The Throat

“Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.”
― Peter Straub, If You Could See Me Now

“...the materials of genre - specifically the paired genres of horror and the fantastic - in no way require the constrictions of formulaic treatment, and in fact naturally extend and evolve into the methods and concerns of its wider context, general literature.”
― Peter Straub (Author), Poe's Children: The New Horror

“Music is a proud, temperamental mistress. Give her the time and attention she deserves, and she is yours. Slight her and there will come a day when you call and she will not answer. So I began sleeping less to give her the time she needed.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“You'll never get anything done if you walk around with an unchipped heart.”
― Peter Straub, Shadowland

“Here is my music. It is all I have to tell you how I feel. Know that your love keeps my love strong.”
― Stevie Wonder

“You can't base your life on other people's expectations.”
― Stevie Wonder

“To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.”
― Anna Louise Strong