Iselin > Iselin's Quotes

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“What of Art?
-It is a malady.
--Love?
-An Illusion.
--Religion?
-The fashionable substitute for Belief.
--You are a sceptic.
-Never! Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.
--What are you?
-To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde , The Picture of Dorian Gray

“what is bad for the heart is good for art. The terrible irony of our lives as artists.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“The fundamental mistake I had always made - and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make - was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“i will admit there's a certain degree of giving a fuck that goes into not giving a fuck. by saying you don't care if the world falls apart, in some small way you're saying you want it to stay together, on your terms.”
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
― Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!

“Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you've been in before - you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Is it true that human beings are fundamentally cruel? Is the experience of cruelty the only thing we share as a species? Is the dignity that we cling to nothing but self-delusion, masking from ourselves the single truth: that each one of us is capable of being reduced to an insect, a ravening beast, a lump of meat? To be degraded, slaughtered - is this the essential of humankind, one which history has confirmed as inevitable?”
― Han Kang, Human Acts

“White hair.
She remembers one of her bosses, a middle-aged man who used to say how he longed to see a former lover again in old age, when her hair would be feather-white. When we’re really old... when every single strand of our hair has gone white, I want to see her then, absolutely.
If there was a time when he would want to see her again, it would certainly be then.
When both young and flesh would have fallen away.
When there would be no time left for desire.
When only one thing would remain to be done once that meeting was over: to separate. To part from their own bodies, and thus to part forever.”
― Han Kang, The White Book

“The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She had never lived. Even as a child, as far back as she could remember, she had done nothing but endure. She had believed in her own inherent goodness, her humanity, and lived accordingly, never causing anyone harm. Her devotion to doing things the right way had been unflagging, all her successes had depended on it, and she would have gone on like that indefinitely. She didn't understand why, but faced with those decaying buildings and straggling grasses, she was nothing but a child who had never lived.”
― Han Kang, The Vegetarian

“I love you just the way you are
but you don't see you like I do.
You shouldn't try so hard to be perfect.
Trust me, perfect should try to be you.”
― Bo Burnham, Egghead; or, You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone

“Then there are the real bastards, like my ex,” she shook her head. “He went around, patting himself on the back, like he’s so much better than all those men. ‘I know the pain that women feel, I respect women. I’ve written papers about it, I know where all the landmines are. My favorite author is Virginia Woolf’ and all that . . . So fucking what, though, right? How many times did you clean the house last month? How many times did you cook? How many times did you go grocery shopping?” I laughed.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs

“For no Reason?"
"For every reason". Rie emptied her sake cup. "Let's start with how she viewed my dad. He was your typical king of the hill. We couldn't say anything growing up. I was a kid, and a girl on top of that, so he never saw me as a real person. I never even heard the guy call my mother by name. It was always Hey you. We were constantly on red alert because my dad would beat the shit out of us or break things for no reason. Of course, outside the home, he was a pillar of the community. He ran the neighborhood council, and all that. My mom was my mom, always laughing it off, running the bath for him, cleaning up after him, feeding him. She looked after both of his parents all the way to the end, too. There was no inheritance, either. Yeah, my mom was free labor - free labor with a pussy.”
― Mieko Kawakami, Breasts and Eggs

“So what can I do now?" she spoke up a minute later.
"Nothing," I said. "Just think about what comes before words. You owe that to the dead. As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself. Is that too much to ask?"
"A little," she said, trying to smile.
"Well, of course it is," I said, trying to smile too.
"I doubt that this makes sense to most people. But I think I'm right. People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if posible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. Personally, I don't buy it."
Yuki leaned against the car door. "But that's real hard, isn't it?" she said.
"Real hard," I said. "But it's worth trying for.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It's when you can't even feel pain anymore that you're in real trouble.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Aren't you afraid of dying?
Not really. I've watched lots of good-for-nothing, worthless people die, and if people like that can do it, then I should be able to handle it.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Maybe I am fated to always be alone, Tsukuru found himself thinking. People came to him, but in the end they always left. They came, seeking something, but either they couldn’t find it, or were unhappy with what they found (or else they were disappointed or angry), and then they left. One day, without warning, they vanished, with no explanation, no word of farewell. Like a silent hatchet had sliced the ties between them, ties through which warm blood still flowed, along with a quiet pulse.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“But it's strange, isn't it?" Eri said.
"What is?"
"That amazing time in our lives is gone, and will never return. All the beautiful possibilities we had then have been swallowed up in the flow of time.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.
It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.
Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“To you, Mom was always Mom. It never occurred to you that she had once taken her first step, or had once been three or twelve or twenty years old. Mom was Mom. She was born as Mom. Until you saw her running to your uncle like that, it hadn’t dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for your own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. From then on, you sometimes thought of Mom as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother who had just given birth to you.”
― Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom

“To be or not to be. That is the question. A question, yes, but not a choice.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Because a bullet without a body is a song without ears.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“It only takes a single night of frost to kill off an entire generation. To live, then, is a matter of time, of timing.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous