Ivonne Rovira > Ivonne's Quotes

“If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there”
― George Harrison

“You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?”
― Edward Albee

“Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?”
“No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.”
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in a hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions… Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.”
― Octavia E. Butler

“We always find it difficult to forgive our heroes for being human.”
― Frances Hardinge, Well Witched

“I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.”
― Markus Zusak

“A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife annual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”
― Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

“If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.”
― Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

“The rule is: the word 'it's' (with apostrophe) stands for 'it is' or 'it has'. If the word does not stand for 'it is' or 'it has' then what you require is 'its'. This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.”
― Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.”
― William W. Purkey

“Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.”
― O. Henry

“I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money - I think that can be a burden - I’m greedy for an exciting life.”
― David Hockney

“Maybe we are all cabinets of wonders.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”
― Amelia Earhart

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“I'm happy. Which often looks like crazy.”
― David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly

“Shut up,' he explained.”
― Ring Lardner

“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright
-- And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done
-- "It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"

The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead
-- There were no birds to fly.

In a Wonderland they lie
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summer die.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Keep on truckin'”
― R. Crumb

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex: A Collection of Her Short Stories, Fables, and Lesser-Known Writings

“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.”
― James Herriot, James Herriot's Cat Stories

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is lead in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, (which are but the mute articulation of his feelings,) not those other things are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water-and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden-it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written.”
― Mark Twain, The Autobiography of Mark Twain

“Sunny day
Sweepin' the clouds away
On my way to where the air is sweet”
― Joe Raposo

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead