Andrea > Andrea's Quotes

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“The trouble with emergencies is," she said, "that I always put on my finest underwear and then nothing happens.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“Excuse me for being so intellectual. I know you would prefer something nice and feminine and affectionate.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
― Virginia Woolf

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Nothing’s changed. You’ll go home. You’ll be bored. You’ll be ignored. No one will listen to you, really listen to you. You’re too clever and too quiet for them to understand. They don’t even get your name right.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“I always think everything is going to last forever, but nothing ever does. In fact nothing exists longer than an instant except the thing that we hold in memory”
― Sam Savage, Firmin

“I had no one to help me, but the T. S. Eliot helped me.

So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is.

It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“It is always a mistake to argue with a librarian.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“We are flawed creatures, all of us. Some of us think that means we should fix our flaws. But get rid of my flaws and there would be no one left.”
― Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“There's none so blind as those who will not listen.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.”
― Philip Pullman

“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Do you fall in love often?"

Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries

“As all advocates of feminist politics know most people do not understand sexism or if they do they think it is not a problem. Masses of people think that feminism is always and only about women seeking to be equal to men. And a huge majority of these folks think feminism is anti-male. Their misunderstanding of feminist politics reflects the reality that most folks learn about feminism from patriarchal mass media.”
― Bell Hooks

“Los libros son finitos, los encuentros sexuales son finitos, pero el deseo de leer y de follar es infinito, sobrepasa nuestra propia muerte, nuestros miedos, nuestras esperanzas de paz.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Insufferable Gaucho

“The process begins with the individual woman’s acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.”
― bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don't want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don't want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe