Anneka Hartley > Anneka's Quotes

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“existence itself is a very special kind of joke”
― J. G. Ballard

“When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“The whole world is now one vast uncontrolled experiment- the way it always was, Crake would have said - and the doctrine of unintended consequences is in full spate.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“It's for us that the University exists, for the dispossessed of the world; not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons that you hear. We give out the reasons, and we let a few of the ordinary ones in, those that would do in the world; but that's just protective coloration.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“I was occupied so entirely by each day, I felt detached from anything so large as a month or a year. History didn't cross my mind. Now it does. Now I know, whatever your burdens, to hold yourself apart from the lot of more powerful men is an illusion. On that awful day in January 1961, Lumumba paid with a life and so did I. On the wings of an owl the fallen Congo came to haunt even our little family, we messengers of goodwill adrift on a sea of mistaken intentions.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.”
― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

“It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“It was never worth worrying about someone you didn’t love. And it wasn’t love if you didn’t worry.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow