Mandy > Mandy's Quotes

“Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”
― W.H. Auden , Another Time

“Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”
― Joss Whedon

“Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen

“When You Are Old"


WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”
― W.B. Yeats

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You

“Books fall open, you fall in.”
― David T.W. McCord

“No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying.”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

“If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Hell is—other people!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“We are our choices.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together. ”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre , Nausea

“All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

“Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Man is what he wills himself to be.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays

“That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

“You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other’s imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Setting fire to the roofs, getting away with the loot, suiting herself. She studied modern philosophy, read Sartre on the side, smoked Gitanes, and cultivated a look of bored contempt. But inwardly, she was seething with unfocused excitement, and looking for someone to worship.”
― Margaret Atwood, Wilderness Tips