Beatriz > Beatriz's Quotes

“Life had taught him that a great and powerful love could be felt for the most apparently unworthy people, a circumstance that ought, after all, to give everybody consolation.”
― Robert Galbraith, Lethal White

“The growing sensitivity of people to any sort of open and frank discussion of important issues is no service to civilisation, let alone law and order. I wrote a play about a man who happened to be a salesman, and several organisations of sales people flew to arms. Now it is the lawyers. If I am to back away from these objections you must surely see that I shall be forced to write about people with no occupation whatever.”
― Arthur Miller

“Besides(..), it's a poor woman whose ambition is only to be loved.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Men are infinitely malleable.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The truth was dawning on me of how terrifying it was not to be numb, but to be aware, to have facts, retain facts, be present, be adult.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman

“It’s all circling around the same problem of personal liberties,” Walter said. “People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don’t have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can’t afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to.”
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

“Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“How far beyond your mother do you hope to get? You are not going to be a different woman entirely, so just be a slightly altered version of her, and relax.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

“I always used to think that I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could. But not any more. I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I'm not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Action isn’t just the effect of motivation; it’s also the cause of it.”
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

“It feels intellectually unserious to concern himself with fictional people marrying one another. But there it is: literature moves him. One of his professors calls it “the pleasure of being touched by great art.” In those words it almost sounds sexual.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations in the same worn-out soil.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Mother," said little Pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!"

"Nor ever will, my child, I hope," said Hester.

"And why not, Mother?" asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. "Will it not come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“I still couldn't accept that Trevor was a loser and a moron. I didn't want to believe that I could have degraded myself for someone who didn't deserve it. I was still stuck on that bit of vanity. But I was determined to sleep it away.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“You cannot stick a knife in a goat and then say, "now I will remove my knife slowly - so let things be easy and clean; let there be no mess." There will always be blood.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“I wondered which other phrases he´d plucked. I felt like a bird he kept for quills.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories we’ve cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived.”
― Susan Orlean, The Library Book

“Nobody's life was untouched by loneliness; it was just a question of weather or not you were able to accept that loneliness for what it was. Put another way, everyone was lonely, and it was up to them whether they chose to bury that loneliness through relationships with other people, and if so, of what sort of intensity and depth.”
― Kikuko Tsumura, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

“The trouble with girls is, if they like a boy, no matter how big a bastard he is, they'll say he has an inferiority complex, and if they don't like him, no matter how nice a guy he is, or how big an inferiority complex he has, they'll say he's conceited. Even smart girls do it.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye