Alice Urchin > Alice's Quotes

“We have better things to do. We realize life is not just a dress rehearsal and if you realize it, you don't need a bumper sticker to remind you.”
― Aimee Bender

“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.”
― Carl Sandburg

“I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.”
― Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“To see someone you love, in a bad setting, is one of the great barometers of gratitude.”
― Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.”
― Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Several of the girls at the party had had sex, something which sounded appealing but only if it could happen with blindfolds in a time warp plus amnesia”
― Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“...a Dorito asks nothing of you, which is its great gift. It only asks that you are not there.”
― Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.”
― Lester Bangs

“All I do is lie, and that has made me immune to compliments.”
― David Sedaris

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
― Rudyard Kipling

“The future is there... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become.”
― William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

“Erik is not truly dead. He lives on within the souls of those who choose to listen to the music of the night.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“If I am the phantom, it is because man's hatred has made me so. If I am to be saved it is because your love redeems me.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“All I wanted was to be loved for myself." (Erik)”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears... and she did not run away!...and she did not die!... She remained alive, weeping over me, weeping with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost...”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“They played at hearts as other children might play at ball; only, as it was really their two hearts that they flung to and fro, they had to be very, very handy to catch them, each time, without hurting them.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Look!You want to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like? Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a good-looking fellow, eh?...When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me.She loves me forever! I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!...Look at me! I am Don Juan Triumphant!
-Erik in The Phantom of the Opera”
― Gaston Leroux

“She's singing to-night to bring the chandelier down!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom, or indifference over his inward joy.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“I am going to die of love....daroga....I am dying of love .... That's how it is... I loved her so! And I love her still...daroga.....and I am dying of love for her, I tell you! if you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her...It was the first ...time, daroga, the first time I ever kissed a woman.. Yes, alive... I kissed her alive.... And she looked as beautiful as if she had been dead!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!...He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. ... He has carried me off for love!...He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!...But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!...And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty...he offered it...he offered to show me the mysterious road...Only...only he rose too...and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice...for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed!...That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“We need to develop a better descriptive vocabulary for lying, a taxonomy, a way to distinguish intentional lies from unintentional ones, and a way to distinguish the lies that the liar himself believes in – a way to signal those lies that could be more accurately described as dreams. Lies – they make for a tidy little psychological Doppler effect, tell us more about a liar than an undistorted self-report ever could.”
― Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances

“Physics advances by accepting absurdities. Its history is one of unbelievable ideas proving to be true.”
― Rivka Galchen

“I’m interested in [meteorology], but I’m more interested in gross misappropriations of the authoritative language of science. It feels rife with clarity, and yet you don’t understand what it means. And I think that’s beautiful.”
― Rivka Galchen

“I’d consider it profession enough to have streaky bleached hair, to wear a green scarf, to spill spicy teas, to walk (slightly) unevenly on high heels. What more is there to give to the world than that? I realize this sentiment of mine is currently considered appalling, but these days I find the popularity of ideas even more meaningless than ever before.”
― Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances

“Only do not forget, if I wake up crying
it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child

hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands....”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets