Elora Ramirez > Elora's Quotes

“When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.”
― Ally Condie, Matched

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Alcohol may be man's worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.”
― Frank Sinatra

“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s. ”
― Anaïs Nin

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”
― Anaïs Nin

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Angry, and half in love with her, and tremendously sorry, I turned away.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“out that expending emotional labor, working without a map, and driving in the dark involve confronting fear and living with the pain of vulnerability. The artist comes to a détente with these emotions and, instead of fighting with them, dances with them. The linchpin connects as a result of the indispensable nature of her contribution. The artist, on the other hand, connects because that’s what art is. The artist touches part of what it means to be truly human and does that work again and again.”
― Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

“It’s what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view.”
― Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

“When your art fails, make better art.”
― Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

“The industrialist (your boss, perhaps) demands that everything be proven, efficient, and risk free. The artist seeks none of these. The value of art is in your willingness to stare down the risk and to embrace the void of possible failure.”
― Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

“Change is powerful, but change always comes with the possibility of failure as its partner. “This might not work” isn’t merely something to be tolerated; it’s something you must seek out.”
― Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

“When those in power use shame to bully the weak into compliance, they are stealing from us. They tell us that they will expose our secrets (not good enough, not hardworking enough, not from the right family, made a huge mistake once) and will use the truth to exile us from our tribe. This shame, the shame that lives deep within each of us, is used as a threat. And when those in power use it, they take away part of our humanity.”
― Seth Godin, The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

“When you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”
― William Saroyan

“There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
― Ray Bradbury

“And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”
― John Steinbeck

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“I feel... alive.”
― Elora Nicole Ramirez, Every Shattered Thing

“Promise me that no matter what happens you will always remember this night as something beautiful. Where instead of feeling worthless, you felt loved. Instead of hiding in fear, you fought and won. Instead of feeling hopeless, you remembered what it felt like to come alive.”
― Elora Nicole Ramirez, Every Shattered Thing

“Talk between women friends is always therapy...”
― Jayne Anne Phillips

“Some politicians have a gift for language. Trump is not one of those politicians. His sentences call to mind an aerial shot of a burning, derailed freight train. The syntax is mangled. The grammar is gone. “Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one,” reads a Politico article from last August.”
― Katy Tur, Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me