Ray > Ray's Quotes

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Anybody can learn to think, or believe, or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel... the moment you feel, you're nobody ― but-yourself ― in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else ― means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.”
― E.E. Cummings

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“The past is never where you think you left it.”
― Katherine Anne Porter

“There seems to be a kind of order in the universe…in the movement of the stars and the turning of the Earth and the changing of the seasons. But human life is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own right and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.”
― Katherine Anne Porter

“I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.”
― Galileo Galilei

“You were once wild here. Don’t let them tame you.”
― Isadora Duncan, Isadora Speaks: Uncollected Writings and Speeches of Isadora Duncan

“Memory is identity....You are what you have done; what you have done is in your memory; what you remember defines who you are; when you forget your life you cease to be, even before your death.”
― Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened Of

“True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their
own.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

“I was happy, I knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”
― Edith Sitwell

“Deep down, I don’t believe it takes any special talent for a person to lift himself off the ground and hover in the air. We all have it in us—every man, woman, and child—and with enough hard work and concentration, every human being is capable of…the feat….You must learn to stop being yourself. That’s where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That’s how it’s done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground.
Like so.”
― Paul Auster, Mr. Vertigo

“I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work.”
― Orhan Pamuk

“Clopotele bisericilor si ale manastirilor au inceput acum sa bata, de departe si de aproape, dar si ele sunt undeva, inauntrul tacerii.”
― Amos Oz, The Hill of Evil Counsel

“Cat de mult seamana viata din zilele noastre cu un bal mizerabil: un pic de lumina, un pic de muzica, putin dans, apoi intuneric. Priveste. Luminile au fost deja stinse, resturile de mancare au fost deja aruncate cainilor.”
― Amos Oz, The Hill of Evil Counsel

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“It's kind of fun to do the impossible.”
― Walt Disney

“Laughter is timeless. Imagination has no age. And dreams are forever.”
― Walt Disney

“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Lo que debemos entender es que ultimamente todo es polvo. Todo lo que podemos tocar. Todo lo que podemos ver. En éste tenemos la evidencia más profunda de la justicia, de la misericordia. En éste vemos la benedición más grande de Dios.

(Ceea ce trebuie noi sa intelegem este ca, pana la urma, de toate se alege tarana. De tot ce putem atinge. De tot ce putem vedea. Asta-i dovada pe care o avem, mai puternica decat dreptatea, decat mila. Prin asta ni se arata cea mai mare binecuvantare a lui Dumnezeu.)”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

“Lumea nu are nici un nume. Numele de cerros, sierras si deserturi exista numai pe harti. Le punem nume ca sa nu ne ratacim. Dar am inventat aceste nume tocmai pentru ca am ratacit deja drumul. Lumea nu se poate pierde. Noi ne pierdem. Si tocmai pentru ca noi am pus numele acestea si am numit aceste coordonate, numele lor nu ne poate salva. Nu pot regasi drumul in locul nostru.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

“Pensamos que somos las víctimas del tiempo. En realidad la vía del mundo no es fijada en ningún lugar. Cómo sería posible? Nosotros mismos somos nuestra propria jornada. Y por eso somos el tiempo también. Somos lo mismo. Fugitivo. Inescrutable. Desapíadado. (Noi credem ca suntem victime ale timpului. In realitate, insa, viata lumii nu se stabileste nicaieri. Cum ar putea? Noi insine suntem propria noastra calatorie. Si deci suntem timpul insusi. Suntem exact ca el. Efemeri. De neinteles. Fara mila.)”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

“Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.”
― Philip Roth

“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”
― Lorraine Hansberry