Alyssa > Alyssa's Quotes

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.”
― Simone de Beauvoir

“That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, Letters to a Young Novelist

“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”
― Christopher Morley, Pipefuls

“The thing about mountains is that you have to keep on climbing them, and that it's always hard, but there's a view from top every time when you finally get there.”
― Nancy Garden, Annie on My Mind

“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren't long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”
― Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader

“The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Fall of Atlantis

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
― William Styron, Conversations with William Styron

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“One is happy once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.”
― George Sand, Correspondance, 1812-1876; Volume 5

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you'd be able to find whatever you were looking for.”
― Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck

“God, I love a man who reads”
― Tiffany Reisz, Seven Day Loan

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
― Søren Kierkegaard , The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin

“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”
― Dorothy Parker, While Rome Burns

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― Francois Mauriac

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Essays, Letters and Miscellanies

“I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
― H.G. Wells, The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman

“How easy it is to judge rightly after one sees what evil comes from judging wrongly.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters

“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“The unfed mind devours itself.”
― Gore Vidal

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”
― Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard

“Just remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away.”
― Arthur Miller, A View from the Bridge: A Play in Two Acts

“Too many of us are hung up on what we don't have, can't have, or won't ever have. We spend too much energy being down, when we could use that same energy – if not less of it – doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do.”
― Terry McMillan , Disappearing Acts

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”
― Socrates