Void. > Void.'s Quotes

“Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.

When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-

If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“As for shame, that's my strength; I would even say it's my mother; I am born of her, I'm ashamed of her, I want her, I'm afraid of her; I could also say that she is my beloved; the way she is, the way I am with her, I can even say that we are as inseparable as the pupil from the eye and as the lovely Isolde from Tristan. She is my opening to the outside, she is my light and my death-bearer; I go through her to get to myself. I owe her even the discovery of my anatomy, an illumination in several chapters, and at the same time my discovery of social laws, of the Mosaic tables and of my sense of ownership. Shame upon shame, they put me together thus.”
― Hélène Cixous, Inside

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“When I start reading I'm somewhere completely different, I'm in the text, it's amazing, I have to admit I've been dreaming, dreaming in a land of great beauty, I've been in the very heart of truth. Ten times a day, every day, I wonder at having wandered so far, and then, alienated from myself, a stranger to myself, I go home, walking the streets silently and in deep meditation, passing trams and cars and pedestrians in a cloud of books, the books I found that day and am carrying home in my briefcase.”
― Bohumil Hrabal , Too Loud a Solitude

“Sadly, I worshipped my childhood, I was fragile and all-powerful at the same time. I had the right to rule in a world created for my pleasure, which was enough for me. What was real interested me not at all for it did not burden me. I had the time to watch the most unenterprising insect, to make a beetle go round and round, to make a string of ants climb up a stem, I had time to count my steps, and to count the numbers of stamens in the heart of a daisy. I knew all about dates, odors, shapes.”
― Hélène Cixous, Inside

“The mercy bullet

I envy horses: if they break a leg and feel humiliated because they can no longer charge back and forth in the wind, they are cured by a mercy bullet. So if something in me gets broken, physically or spiritually, I would do well to look for a proficient killer, even if he is one of my enemies. I will pay him a fee and the price of the bullet, kiss his hand and his revolver, and if I am able to write, extol him in a poem of rare beauty, for which he can choose the metre and rhyme.”
― Mahmoud Darwish, A River Dies of Thirst: Journals

“When I think of my mother’s violent temper, outbursts of affection, and reproachful attitude, I try not to see them as facets of her personality but to relate them to her own story and social background. This way of writing, which seems to bring me closer to the truth, relieves me of the dark, heavy burden of personal remembrance by establishing a more objective approach. And yet something deep down inside refuses to yield and wants me to remember my mother purely in emotional terms—affection or tears—without searching for an explanation.”
― Annie Ernaux, A Woman's Story

“It’s actually sort of soothing to think of how massive the universe is, and how I could be snuffed out at any minute. I guess I like tricking my brain into disarming things.”
― Emily R. Austin, Interesting Facts about Space

“But there are some fears that are rational. It’s reasonable to be afraid of murder, or to feel troubled about existing as a speck on a space rock floating in colossal, silent darkness. Those are rational fears. They’re both fears that can’t really be faced. How am I supposed to cope with fears like that? I thought the only option was to be delusional. I thought everyone coped by imagining reality isn’t what it is—by ignoring the threat of murder, or by forgetting we’re in space—or by doing what I do. By repeatedly exposing yourself until the threats feel familiar, the shock wears off, and you’ve conditioned yourself to find what scares you pacifying.”
― Emily R. Austin, Interesting Facts about Space