CJ > CJ's Quotes

“There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go--if there are no doors or windows--he walks through a wall.”
― Bernard Malamud

“For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.”
― W.B. Yeats, Selected Poems and Four Plays

“It is very risky. But each time a child opens a book, he pushes open the gate that separates him from Elsewhere.”
― Lois Lowry

“Drink wine. This is life eternal. This is all that youth will give you. It is the season for wine, roses and drunken friends. Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
― Omar Khayyam, رباعيات خيام

“Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.”
― Jim Butcher, Changes

“The next time I opened my eyes, I was in the morgue.
This, all by itself, is enough to really ruin your day.
I was lying on the examining table, and Butters, complete with his surgical gown and his tray of autopsy instruments, stood over me.
'I'm not dead!' I sputtered. 'I'm not dead!”
― Jim Butcher, Death Masks

“We are a generation of young women who were told we could do anything and instead heard that we had to be everything.”
― Courtney E. Martin, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart; imagine my heartbeat when you are in this state.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”
― Anais Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?”
― Anais Nin

“I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing my darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ”
― Anais Nin

“Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
― Anaïs Nin, Incest: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932-1934

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”
― Anais Nin

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“You don't find love, it finds you. It's got a little bit to do with destiny, fate, and what's written in the stars.”
― Anaïs Nin

“I want to fall in love in such a way that the mere sight of a man, even a block away from me, will shake and pierce me, will weaken me, and make me tremble and soften and melt.”
― Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus

“I thought leaving you would be easy,
just walking out the door
but I keep getting pinned against it
with my legs around your waist and it’s like
my lips want you like my lungs want air,
it’s just what they where born to do so
I am sitting at work thinking of you
cutting vegetables in my kitchen
your hair in my shower drain
your fingers on my spine in the morning
while we listen to Muddy Waters, I know
you will never be the one I call home
but the way you talk about poems
like marxists talk of revolution
it makes me want to keep trying.
I’m still looking for reasons to love you.
I’m still looking for proof you love me.”
― Clementine von Radics

“He Who Knows And Knows That He Knows Is A Wise Man - Follow Him;
He Who Knows Not And Knows Not That He Knows Not Is A Fool - Shun Him”
― Confucius, The Analects

“I will look after you and I will look after anybody you say needs to be looked after, any way you say. I am here. I brought my whole self to you. I am your mother.”
― Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom

“Love heals. Heals and liberates. I use the word love, not meaning sentimentality, but a condition so strong that it may be that which holds the stars in their heavenly positions and that which causes the blood to flow orderly in our veins.”
― Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom

“Yes, but if we hurt the Abadonna in the process, we’re going to find out what it feels like to be turned inside out. Literally. Like most beings, I actually like the fact that my skin is outside my body. (Urian)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kiss of the Night

“there are ways to let the world kill you.
first, lose your tongue in the mouth of a
lover.
second, do not remember your softness.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“Beneath it all
I know
you are made of soft wind
and calm flowing water
but
on days when
you become strong wind
and crashing waves
be
rest assured
you did not
become less of you

do not become the woman
apologizing for days
when she has thorns
from the harshness
of the world.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“He dropped his towel. He showed me what I had gotten myself into, what wanted to get into me.”
― Eric Jerome Dickey, One Night

“The best is always worth waiting for. And once you taste it, no other taste will do.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, someone not everyone knows how to love.”
― Warsan Shire

“every mouth you’ve ever kissed
was just practice
all the bodies you’ve ever undressed
and ploughed in to
were preparing you for me.
i don’t mind tasting them in the
memory of your mouth
they were a long hall way
a door half open
a single suit case still on the conveyor belt
was it a long journey?
did it take you long to find me?
you’re here now,
welcome home.”
― Warsan Shire

“With you, intimacy colours my voice.
even ‘hello’ sounds like ‘come here'.”
― Warsan Shire

“Don't assume, ask. Be kind. Tell the truth. Don't say anything you can't stand behind fully. Have integrity. Tell people how you feel.”
― Warsan Shire