Julia > Julia's Quotes

“Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“Das Gegengift zu Einsamkeit ist nicht das wahllose Zusammensein mit irgendwelchen Leuten. Das Gegengift zu Einsamkeit ist Geborgenheit.”
― Benedict Wells, Vom Ende der Einsamkeit

“Sometimes feelings are like that - not positive, not negative, just a lot.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Here I Am

“People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus

“When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.”
― Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time

“It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“We’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.”
― S.J. Watson, Before I Go to Sleep

“I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.”
― Paul Auster, Winter Journal

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“You had to be there to see what it looked like. They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare.”
― Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

“Whenever things were frightening, it was a good idea to measure them.”
― Daniel Kehlmann, Measuring the World

“The thing about writing is I can't tell if it's healing or destroying.”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and honey

“People who have experienced nothing love to tell stories while people who have experienced a great deal suddenly have no stories to tell at all.”
― Daniel Kehlmann, Ruhm. Ein Roman in neun Geschichten

“Wenn ich in Unterleuten eins gelernt habe, dann dass jeder Mensch ein eigenes Universum bewohnt, in dem er von morgens bis abends recht hat.”
― Juli Zeh, Unterleuten

“It's not like that, as we've seen. Mathematicians aren't crazy, and we aren't aliens, and we aren't mystics.

What's true is that the sensation of mathematical understanding-of suddenly knowing what's going on, with total certainty, all the way to the bottom-is a special thing, attainable in few if any other places in life. You feel you've reached into the universe's guts and put your hand on the wire. It's hard to describe to people who haven't experienced it.”
― Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

“The lessons of mathematics are simple ones and there are no numbers in them: that there is structure in the world; that we can hope to understand some of it and not just gape at what our senses present to us; that our intuition is stronger with a formal exoskeleton than without one. And that mathematical certainity is one thing, the softer convictions we find attached to us in everyday life another, and we should keep track of the difference if we can.”
― Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

“When no one understands, that's usually a good sign that you're wrong.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“Ich glaube, man sollte überhaupt nur solche Bücher lesen, die einen beißen und stechen. Wenn das Buch, das wir lesen, uns nicht mit einem Faustschlag auf den Schädel weckt, wozu lesen wir dann das Buch? Damit es uns glücklich macht, wie Du schreibst? Mein Gott, glücklich wären wir eben auch, wenn wir keine Bücher hätten, und solche Bücher, die uns glücklich machen, könnten wir zur Not selber schreiben. Wir brauchen aber die Bücher, die auf uns wirken wie ein Unglück, das uns sehr schmerzt, wie der Tod eines, den wir lieber hatten als uns, wie wenn wir in Wälder vorstoßen würden, von allen Menschen weg, wie ein Selbstmord, ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.”
― Franz Kafka

“We don’t fight for our own happy endings. We fight to say you can’t. We fight for accountability. We fight to establish precedent. We fight because we pray we’ll be the last ones to feel this kind of pain.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“Things and people moved around me, taking positions in obscure hierarchies, participating in systems I didn't know about and never would. A complex network of objects and concepts. You live through certain things before you understand them. You can't always take the analytical position.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“Denn jede Geschichte, die man erzählte, gehörte einem nicht mehr ganz. Man musste darauf achten, was man teilte. Die wichtigsten Geschichten behielt man besser für sich.”
― Thomas Glavinic, Das größere Wunder

“She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime.”
― Mineko Iwasaki