Ana Calabresi > Ana's Quotes

“You are growing into consciousness, and my wish for you is that you feel no need to constrict yourself to make other people comfortable.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
― Socrates

“Where I'm at is a big Episcopal church in downtown Newark, New Jersey, sitting in the dark while I try to rescue the doomed bits and pieces of life, in the hope that a mere story can become Noah's Ark and deliver all the living things of the past to a bright and glorious immortality?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters Remix

“Words: with them you can do and undo as you please.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name

“Rule number one: Don't fuck with librarians.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Gmorning!
You're gonna make mistakes.
You're gonna fail.
You're gonna get back up.
You're gonna break hearts.
You're gonna change minds.
You're gonna make noise.
You're gonna make music.
You're gonna be late, let's GO.

Gnight!
You're gonna fall down.
You're gonna be tested.
You're gonna learn about yourself.
You're gonna get brave.
You're gonna take stands.
You're gonna make waves.
You're gonna make history.
You're gonna need rest, REST UP.”
― Lin-Manuel Miranda, Gmorning, Gnight!: Little Pep Talks for Me & You

“We’re depriving our kids of the chance to do the work of life for themselves.”
― Julie Lythcott-Haims, How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success

“The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.”
― Wisława Szymborska

“I looked up then, searched the sky. When I found the moon, I found God, when I saw the stars, I saw God, when I let myself be inhaled by the vast, expanding universe, I understood God the way Seneca once did– God is everything one sees and everything one does not see.”
― Tahereh Mafi, An Emotion of Great Delight: A YA Novel of Muslim American Identity, Grief, and Hope in Post-9/11 America

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“That was maybe the the worst insult of adulthood, that even your silly, non-life-threatening, non-base desires got swallowed up by routine and maturity and edged out of your life for good.”
― Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is in Trouble

“You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.”
― Benjamin Mee, We Bought a Zoo

“What we call the imagination consists of fragments of memory that lack any clear connection with one another.”
― Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation

“To continue one habit that long requires a great deal of effort. How have I been able to do it? It’s because I feel like the act of running represents, concretely and succinctly, some of the things I have to do in this life. I have that sort of general, yet very strong, sense. So even on days when I think I’m not feeling so great and don’t feel like running, I tell myself, “No matter what, this is something I have to do in my life,” and I go out and run without really ascribing a logical reason for it. That sentence has become a kind of mantra for me: No matter what, this is something I have to do in my life.”
― Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation

“Collectivity: because “everything worthwhile is done with others” (Moussa Kaba).”
― Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice