Donna > Donna's Quotes

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

“Résumé
Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live.”
― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

“Don't look at me in that tone of voice.”
― Dorothy Parker

“Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying.”
― Iain M. Banks, Against a Dark Background

“The bomb lives only as it is falling.”
― Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons

“My gratitude extends beyond the limits of my capacity to express it,”
― Iain M. Banks, The Player of Games

“That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again.”
― Ali Smith, Winter

“A great many men don't understand a woman full of joy, even more don't understand paintings full of joy by a woman.”
― Ali Smith, Autumn

“It was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible — incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. It seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

“She kept swimming out into life because she hadn't yet found a rock to stand on.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“It is true that I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“If we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again...

to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

“For a New Beginning
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.
Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.”
― John O Donohue

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”
― Philip Pullman

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.”
― James Baldwin

“I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past and make it come out right.”
― Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time

“The love of a cat is unconditional but always subject to negotiation. You are never entirely in charge.”
― Marge Piercy, Sleeping with Cats