Ghita Benabbou > Ghita's Quotes

“The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place.”
― Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“Literature is humanity talking to itself.”
― Norman Rush

“I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.”
― Stephen Greenblatt

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
― Sigmund Freud

“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
― Ivan Turgenev

“In a time of destruction, create something.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's
why.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“لن تكون متدينا إلا بالعلم ...فالله لا يعبد بالجهل”
― مصطفى محمود, القرآن: محاولة لفهم عصري

“حين ينتهي الحُب , أَدرك انه لم يكن حُباً
الحبّ لا بد أن يُعاش , لا أن يُتذَكر!”
― محمود درويش

“أُحب الشئ ثم أنقلب عليه لئلا يستعبدني.”
― محمود درويش

“و نحن نحب الحياة إذا ما استطعنا إليها سبيلا”
― محمود درويش, ورد أقل

“عندما تصبح المكتبة ضرورة كالطاولة والسرير والكرسي والمطبخ؛ عندئذ يمكن القول بأننا أصبحنا قومًا متحضرين”
― ميخائيل نعيمة, أحاديث مع الصحافة

“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”
― Lorrie Moore

“I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealings with men.”
― Joseph Conrad, Chance

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”
― Brigham Young

“Well, it seems to me that the best relationships - the ones that last - are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is... suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.”
― Gillian Anderson

“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir...mighty scarce.”
― Mark Twain

“In politics, If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.”
― Margaret Thatcher

“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

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“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