Anne > Anne's Quotes

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
― James Baldwin

“Enjoy going through life as yourself.”
― Lena Dunham

“Let's be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.”
― Lena Dunham

“The Voice

There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
"I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong."
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What's right for you--just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.”
― Shel Silverstein

“That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.”
― James Jones, From Here to Eternity

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

“It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up ’cause they’re looking for ideas.”
― Paula Poundstone

“Though [Abraham Lincoln] never would travel to Europe, he went with Shakespeare’s kings to Merry England; he went with Lord Byron poetry to Spain and Portugal. Literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin

“You might as well answer the door, my child,
the truth is furiously knocking.”
― Lucille Clifton, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980

“For me, literacy means freedom. For the individual and for society.”
― LeVar Burton

“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“You only have one body and despite how well you live your life, it may never change. Can you afford to hate yourself for the rest of your life?”
― Linda Bacon, Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight

“...have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way...I can't apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to... We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful...We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“How I compare it to now is, at this moment we are all living through, everyone on earth is experiencing a suspension of loss. Over half a million people dead in the United States alone. The number is too overwhelming to accept, so we go on with our lives and we do what we can but, in the end, the staggering loss will be waiting for us. It always catches up to you, doesn’t it?”
― Karin Slaughter, False Witness

“Humans. For the most part, you are dull and blundering. But occasionally, you can be remarkably bright creatures.”
― Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures

“Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?”
― Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures

“Tell me again about the intelligence of humans. They cannot even manage to comprehend predictable meteorological events.”
― Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures

“Being gay or straight,” says Elizabeth, “is about who you want to go to
bed with. Being trans—or cis—is about who you want to go to bed as.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“How similar does someone have to be to you before you remember to see them, first, as human?”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“If you want to understand something, you first need to accept the fact of your own ignorance. And then, you need to talk to people who know more than you do, people who have not just thought about the facts, but lived them.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“In the absence of proof, you believe.”
― William Kent Krueger, Purgatory Ridge

“You will share the same fire. You will hang your garments together. You will help one another. You will walk the same trail. You will look after one another. Be kind to one another. Be kind to your children.”
― William Kent Krueger, Purgatory Ridge

“When we liberate ourselves from the expectation that we must have all things figured out, we enter a sanctuary of empathy.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Radical self-love demands that we see ourselves and others in the fullness of our complexities and intersections and that we work to create space for those intersections.”
― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

“Why is it that when men act out it’s always someone else’s fault?”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“You aren’t small. You don’t have to make yourself small. You are allowed to have feelings. You are allowed to experience rage. You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to be irrational and loud and ugly. You don’t have to make yourself less. Not ever again. You don’t have to play by those rules anymore.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence