Dirk > Dirk's Quotes

“Everything comes down to this: the reason for every word I have written and every word I will write. I am recounting my life for you so that you may know this secret without the pain of discovering it: We are unhappy because we think that love is something we require from someone else. Our salvation depends on a simple gesture that is nonetheless the most difficult act we can perform: We must give away the thing we most long for. Not to receive but to give.”
― Arthur Japin, In Lucia's Eyes

“We are unhappy because we think that love is something we require from someone else.”
― Arthur Japin, In Lucia's Eyes

“Het is een kwestie van durven, meer niet. Dat geldt voor alle kunst, dus ook voor die van het leven”
― Arthur Japin, Vaslav

“Als ik één ding kan is het liefhebben. Dat lijkt niet veel bijzonders, maar ik ben er trots op.
Ik heb het geleerd zoals een zwerfhond leert zwemmen: omdat hij met de rest van de worp in een jutezak werd gepropt en in een snelstromende rivier is geworpen.
Die ene die het tegen alle verwachtingen in gered heeft, dat ben ik.
Met in mijn oren nog het gejank van degenen die het niet haalden, moest ik leren ergens van te houden.
Ik ben niet onder gegaan.
Ik heb de kant bereikt.
Ik heb lief.
Andere mensen dragen hun verdriet in hun hart.
Ongezien holt dat hen vanbinnen uit. Het is mijn redding geweest dat ik mijn verdriet aan de buitenkant draag, waar het niemand kan ontgaan.
”
― Arthur Japin, Een schitterend gebrek

“Reality continues to ruin my life.”
― Bill Watterson, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
― Marthe Troly-Curtin, Phrynette Married

“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
― Bob Marley

“Everything you can imagine is real.”
― Pablo Picasso

“No more let life divide what death can join together.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonais

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side?”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Now you’ve said it. The hopeless emptiness. Hell, plenty of people are on to the emptiness part; out where I used to work, on the Coast, that’s all we ever talked about. We’d sit around talking about emptiness all night. Nobody ever said ‘hopeless,’ though; that’s where we’d chicken out. Because maybe it does take a certain amount of guts to see the emptiness, but it takes a whole hell of a lot more to see the hopelessness. And I guess when you do see the hopelessness, that’s when there’s nothing to do but take off. If you can”
― Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“That's the only thing that matters, honey, for someone to see more in you than you thought there was to see.”
― Arthur Japin, In Lucia's Eyes

“Veel van wat aanvankelijk alleen in de verbeelding bestaat, wordt werkelijkheid.”
― Arthur Japin, Een schitterend gebrek

“Te veel kennis over onszelf doen we op uit de blikken van anderen. Wij vertrouwen eerder op hoe wij gezien worden dan op hoe wij onszelf zien.”
― Arthur Japin, In Lucia's Eyes

“My love was alive, not because I was loved, but because I myself loved!”
― Arthur Japin, In Lucia's Eyes

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

“The questions which one asks oneself begin, at last, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others. One can only face in others what one can face in oneself. On this confrontation depends the measure of our wisdom and compassion. This energy is all that one finds in the rubble of vanished civilizations, and the only hope for ours.”
― James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?"

"Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel."

"And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room