Renée > Renée's Quotes

“I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you--haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe--I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Am I to understand all your hearthfire thoughts involve blades?” He blinked slowly, his gaze meandering down to her lips. “Horse was included.” Rey leaned forward and whispered loudly, “The chicks as well.”
― Demi Winters, Kingdom of Claw

“A woman more beautiful than forest fairy showed it to me. I was so enchanted, I set fire to my own boat to stay longer by her side.”
― Demi Winters, Kingdom of Claw

“The gargoyle’s stone brow knit. “If I were beside myself, there would be two of me, and the washing would have taken half the time.”
― Rachel Gillig, The Knight and the Moth

“No derision, no drinking—less at war with herself. “Maybe I’ve only been around women, but you seem better natured than the two of them combined.”
― Rachel Gillig, The Knight and the Moth

“Time to leave now, get out of this room, go somewhere, anywhere; sharpen this feeling of happiness and freedom, stretch your limbs, fill your eyes, be awake, wider awake, vividly awake in every sense and every pore.”
― Stefan Zweig, The Post-Office Girl

“Memory is so corrupt that you remember only what you want to; if you want to forget about something, slowly but surely you do.”
― Stefan Zweig, The Post-Office Girl

“There is nothing more vindictive, nothing more underhanded, than a little world that would like to be a big one.”
― Stefan Zweig, The Post-Office Girl

“See, that’s what we’re like. You’re brave and you’re not afraid to die, but you’re afraid of being late for work. That’s how enslaved we are, that’s how ingrained it is.”
― Stefan Zweig, The Post-Office Girl

“Poverty was crushing all the feeling they had. It was intolerable to be together this way, and yet they tolerated it.”
― Stefan Zweig, The Post-Office Girl

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

“The only woman's body I had studied, with ever-increasing apprehension, was the lame body of my mother, and I had felt pressed, threatened by that image, and still feared that it would suddenly impose itself on mine. That day, instead, I saw clearly the mothers of the old neighborhood. They were nervous, they were acquiescent. They were silent, with tight lips and stooping shoulders, or they yelled terrible insults at the children who harassed them. Extremely thin, with hollow eyes and cheeks, they lugged shopping bags and small children who clung to their skirts and wanted to be picked up. And, good God, they were ten, at most twenty years older than me. Yet they appeared to have lost those feminine qualities that were so important to us girls and that we accentuated with clothes, with makeup. They had been consumed by the bodies of husbands, fathers, brothers, whom they ultimately came to resemble, because of their labors or the arrival of old age, of illness. When did that transformation begin? With housework? With pregnancies? With beatings?”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name

“It was Sunday morning, and old people passed me like sad grey waves on their way to church.”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“Now I lay down on this tree and felt a lonely sadness coming over me in waves. Slow tears ran from my eyes and trickled into my ears. I thought, 'I even cry in a humble, common way, with tears flowing into my ears.' But the humble, common tears had relieved me[...]”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“Her face worked in an odd way, like knitting coming undone.”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“When I left the kitchen the whole family were all gazing upwards at the dancing flies.”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“It was after breakfast, and I went into the dining-room to clear away the remains of Father's kippers. The sun came slanting in through the window and touched the mantelpiece, where the monkey's skull used to lie. I placed a damp log on the recently lighted fire. A soft hissing sound came and a frantic woodlouse rushed about the smoking bark. I rescued it with a teaspoon, although I had no fondness for woodlice. It was a pity to let it burn—and there it was, squirming on the damp tea-spoon, grey and rather horrible. With one hand I pushed up the window and with the other placed it on the sill, where it crawled about leaving a small wet trail of tea among the winged sycamore-seeds that had lodged there. The air was sharp and wintry, and the street very still. The only people to be seen were a few pale women with black string bags. Under the gate a dried leaf rustled very gently. I thought, 'It's minutes like this that seem to last so long.”
― Barbara Comyns, The Vet's Daughter

“Bit warm for that”
― Ania Ahlborn, Brother