Keith > Keith's Quotes

“sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.”
― Leonard Cohen

“I have never thought of writing as a profession. It is a solitary independent activity in which practice can never bestow seniority.”
― John Berger

“We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.”
― Charles Bukowski

“The cure for him would be to take a good long look at some potato plants, which have lately had such a deep and distinctive colour and tone, instead of driving himself mad looking at pieces of yellow satin and gold leather.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“The day before me is fraught with God knows what horrors.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!  
  No hungry generations tread thee down;  
The voice I hear this passing night was heard  
  In ancient days by emperor and clown:  
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path   
  Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,  
    She stood in tears amid the alien corn;  
          The same that ofttimes hath  
  Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam  
    Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”
― john keats

“When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."

(Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains.)”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
― Malcolm X

“She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.”
― Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch

“I have a great liking for polygraphs who cast their fishing poles in all
directions...”
― Julio Cortazar

“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend”
― Albert Camus

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“For all symbols are fluxional; all language is vehicular and transitive, and is good, as ferries and houses are, for conveyance, not as farms and houses are, for homestead.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson