Ellen > Ellen's Quotes

“Among the beliefs I held about the world was that being beautiful should not matter to a woman, because it was one of those things that would go away-- your beauty would go away,and there wouldn't be anything you could do to bring it back.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

“Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms.”
― Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger

“We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.”
― James Salter, All That Is

“a happy birthday

this evening, I sat by an open window
and read till the light was gone and the book
was no more than a part of the darkness.
I could easily have switched on a lamp,
but I wanted to ride the day down into night,
to sit alone, and smooth the unreadable page
with the pale gray ghost of my hand”
― Ted Kooser, Delights and Shadows

“Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“That was the moment he got the idea he possessed me in a certain way, and that was the moment I grew tired of him.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

“In her mind I read that any community can be assessed by the way it treats women, not something I have thought of before.”
― Tade Thompson, Rosewater

“The idea of a singular hero and a manifest destiny just makes us lazy. There is no destiny. There is choice, there is action, and any other narrative perpetuates a myth that someone else out there will fix our problems with a magic sword and a blessing from the gods.”
― Tade Thompson, Rosewater

“She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better.”
― Ali Smith, Artful