Toscano > Toscano's Quotes

“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“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

“Scriveremo: «Noi mangiamo molte noci», e non: «Amiamo le noci», perché il verbo amare non è un verbo sicuro, manca di precisione e di obiettività. «Amare le noci» e «amare nostra Madre», non può voler dire la stessa cosa. La prima formula designa un gusto gradevole in bocca, e la seconda un sentimento. Le parole che definiscono i sentimenti sono molto vaghe, è meglio evitare il loro impiego e attenersi alla descrizione degli oggetti, degli esseri umani e di se stessi, vale a dire alla descrizione fedele dei fatti.”
― Ágota Kristof, Le grand cahier

“Posso persino dire d'aver avuto un'infanzia felice perché non sapevo che esistessero altre infanzie.”
― Ágota Kristof, Yesterday

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
― Virginia Woolf

“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.”
― T.S. Eliot

“What is hell? Hell is oneself.
Hell is alone, the other figures in it
Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from
And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.”
― T.S. Eliot

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we
imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Proposition, I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet, I feel like something important has happened to me.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Il più bello dei mari / è quello che non navigammo. / Il più bello dei nostri figli / non è ancora cresciuto. / I più belli dei nostri giorni / non li abbiamo ancora vissuti. / E quello / che vorrei dirti di più bello / non te l'ho ancora detto.”
― Nâzım Hikmet

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“Sei la mia schiavitù sei la mia libertà
Sei la mia carne che brucia
come la nuda carne delle notti d’estate
Sei la mia patria
Tu, coi riflessi verdi dei tuoi occhi
Tu, alta e vittoriosa
Sei la mia nostalgia
di saperti inaccessibile
Nel momento stesso
in cui ti afferro”
― Nâzım Hikmet, Poems of Nazım Hikmet

“Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,
- Drown'd all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead.
Awake! arise! my love and fearless be,
For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee.”
― John Keats, Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”
― Yukio Mishima

“When a boy… discovers that he is more given into introspection and consciousness of self than other boys his age, he easily falls into the error of believing it is because he is more mature than they. This was certainly a mistake in my case. Rather, it was because the other boys had no such need of understanding themselves as I had: they could be their natural selves, whereas I was to play a part, a fact that would require considerable understanding and study. So it was not my maturity but my sense of uneasiness, my uncertainty that was forcing me to gain control over my consciousness. Because such consciousness was simply a steppingstone to aberration and my present thinking was nothing but uncertain and haphazard guesswork.”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life