Ivana > Ivana's Quotes

“Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.”
― Yasunari Kawabata

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Every woman is a rebel.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Cosette, in her seclusion, like Marius in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, was slowly bringing these two beings near each other, fully charged and all languishing with the stormy electricities of passion,—these two souls which held love as two clouds hold lightning, and which were to meet and mingle in a glace like clouds in a flash.

The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than these great shocks which two souls give each other in exchanging this spark.

At that particular moment when Cosette unconsciously looked with this glance which so affected Marius, Marius had no suspicion that he also had a glance which affected Cosette.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time.”
― Murakami, Haruki

“A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants.”
― Lawrence Durrell, Justine

“What really annoys me are the ones who write to say, I am doing your book for my final examinations and could you please tell me what the meaning of it is. I find it just so staggering--that you're supposed to explain the meaning of your book to some total stranger! If I knew what the meanings of my books were, I wouldn't have bothered to write them.”
― Margaret Drabble

“The woman was silent, her eyes on the floor. Shimamura had come to a point where he knew he was only parading his masculine shamelessness, and yet it seemed likely enough that the woman was familiar with the failing and need not be shocked by it. He looked at her. Perhaps it was the rich lashes of the downcast eyes that made her face seem warm and sensuous. She shook her head very slightly, and again a faint blush spread over her face.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country

“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.”
― Somerset Maugham

“When nothing is sure, everything is possible.”
― Margaret Drabble

“There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self -- because she does not know where to find it.”
― Lawrence Durrell

“Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark”
― Isaac Bashevis Singer, Teibele and her demon

“Hercule Poirot: I am an imbecile. I see only half of the picture.
Miss Lemon: I don't even see that.”
― Agatha Christie

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

“Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.”
― Milan Kundera

“Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Women joked amongst themselves: 'Why do you think a bride cries on her wedding day? It's for the love that this marriage is putting an end to for all eternity. Men may think a woman has no past- "you were born and then I married you"- but men are fools.”
― Nadeem Aslam, Maps for Lost Lovers

“...handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.”
― Salman Rushdie

“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.”
― Jean Cocteau

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.”
― Neil Gaiman

“No, the secret is that there's no reward and we have to endure our characters and our natures as best we can, because no amount of experience or insight is going to rectify our deficiencies, our self-regard, or our cupidity. We have to learn that our desires do not find any real echo in the world. We have to accept that the people we love do not love us, or not in the way we hope. We have to accept betrayal and disloyalty, and, hardest of all, that someone is finer than we are in character or intelligence.”
― Sándor Márai, Embers

“But it was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper.”
― Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach

“I realize that I only have words and that, from time to time, as I hold them in my arms I am less lonely.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed

“If only I can find him... the man who will be intelligent, yet physically magnetic and personable. If I can offer that combination, why shouldn't I expect it in a man?”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Beauty is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight,or springtime, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you...Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed...Ah! realise your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar...Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing...The world belongs to you for a season...how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last. The common hillflowers wither, but they blossom again. The laburnum will be as yellow next June as it is now. In a month there will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green night of its leaves will hold its purple stars. But we never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to...Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray