bee > bee's Quotes

“Well, personally, I've seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath

“There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.”
― Anais Nin

“You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.”
― Adrienne Rich

“She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves. ”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“Reading is important - read between the lines. Don't swallow everything.”
― Gwendolyn Brooks

“Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.”
― Anne Sexton

“How can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me?”
― Rabih Alameddine, I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

“Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Of course I was under the spell, and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it; it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.”
― Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

“For I think belief in God is not a matter of reason at all; I think it finally is a matter of love.”
― William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“God said: GOD MADE YOU. GOD DOES NOT CARE IF YOU ARE "GUILTY" OR NOT. I said: I CARE IF I AM GUILTY! I CARE IF I AM GUILTY!... God was silent. Everything was SILENT.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“I’m the Turtle, son. I made the universe, but please don’t blame me for it; I had a belly-ache.”
― Stephen King, It

“you must some day die for nothing
as I
have lived.”
― Charles Bukowski, Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

“I may think of you softly from time to time. But I’ll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“The best conversations are with yourself. At least there's no risk of a misunderstanding.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“But why should we have to be useful and for what reason? Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse? A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

“The problem with genuine memories is that you know too much. It ruins everything.”
― Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

“The only thing standing between me and the thought that life was completely meaningless was the idea that producing something out of all my misery might make things feel worthwhile.”
― Pip Finkemeyer, Sad Girl Novel

“I allowed myself to indulge in my ultimate adult fantasy: that everything would be okay.”
― Pip Finkemeyer, Sad Girl Novel

“Stop trying to make everything mean something,” Lisa said. “Trying to flatten everything to a “symbol or a point. The coral is dying because of microbeads in body wash and because of Monsanto and because there’s no reason for anyone powerful enough to do anything about it to do anything about it.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“When you are ten, shame stitches itself into you like a monogram, broadcasting to the world what holds you, what rules your soul. In school Roya could smell the dank must even though she’d soaped it away and changed into fresh clothes. The scent wasn’t so much on her as it was of her, compositional. It clung inside her nose like a kind of rot. She was certain everyone else could smell it.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“My father the grown-up, my father the child. We are falling into the sunset. Falling into the night sky. Maybe the night sky is kind. Forgiving. We have both been forgiven a thousand times. Being human, always new things to forgive. Forgive me, father. You are already forgiven. Forgive me, daughter. There’s nothing to forgive.”
― Melissa Broder, Death Valley

“I need a T-shirt that says 'I survived the nuclear family and all I got was post-traumatic stress disorder' and then on the back it'll say 'and this lousy T-shirt.”
― Chantal V. Johnson, Post-Traumatic

“People often tell me that I spend too much time being afraid of something that is statistically less likely than a car crash. But every time I read the news, I am pummeled by stories of missing girls, murdered girls, women killed by their revenge-seeking former boyfriends, and it becomes increasingly difficult to call the murder of women “rare.” It is impossible to call my fear “irrational.”
― Olivia Gatwood, Life of the Party

“The closer you get to the Wal-Mart headquarters, the closer you are to God.”
― Elle Nash, Deliver Me