Kaisa Winter > Kaisa's Quotes

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”
― Emily Dickinson

“It was our show. The neighbours could watch if they wanted but it was ours. We were the actors, the directors and the audience. Part of our script came from films we’d seen, parties we’d been to before. The rest we made up as we went along and it was perfect.
Whistles and crackles sounded above us, shooting out swarms of fireflies that faded before they reached us.
We were magic and fearless.”
― Lydia Ruffles, The Taste of Blue Light

“It’s optional but only in the way that having another tequila is optional.”
― Lydia Ruffles, The Taste of Blue Light

“We talk and talk about things that only matter when you’re six beers deep and ready for a whisky.”
― Lydia Ruffles, The Taste of Blue Light

“Everything is perfect on the street again, the world is permeated with roses of happiness all the time, but none of us know it. The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.”
― Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

“We were standing outside on the great steps of the hall high above the blue waters of San Francisco Bay, and they were there, the white ships on the tide, and all my love rose to sing my newfound seaman's life. -- The Sea! Real ships! My sweet ship had come in, no dream but true with tangled rigging and actual shipmates and the job slip secure in my wallet and only the night before I'd been kicking cockroaches in my tiny dark room in 3rd Street slums.”
― Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

“I settled down to long sweet sleeps, day-long meditations in the house, writing, and long walks around beloved old Manhattan a half hour subway ride away. I roamed the streets, the bridges, Times Square, cafeterias, the waterfront, I looked up all my poet beatnik friends and roamed with them, I had love affairs with girls in the Village, I did everything with that great mad joy you get when you return to New York City.”
― Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

“I tried to count a pinch of sand knowing there are as many worlds as the sands in all the oceans. -- O honored of the worlds! for just then an old robed Bodhisattva, an old robed bearded realized of the greatness of wisdom came walking by with a staff and a shapeless skin bag and a cotton pack and a basket on his back, with white cloth around his hoary brown brow. -- I saw him coming from miles away down the beach -- the shrouded Arab by the sea. -- We didnt even nod to each other -- it was too much, we'd known each other too long ago.”
― Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

“It took about eleven of these texts for me to realize he was doing some kind of Dadaist performance art at my expense.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“I walked out into the street the next day bare legged and reeling, not sure whether I'd been ruined or awoken.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“The end never comes when you think it will. It's always ten steps past the worst moment, then a weird turn to the left.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“Later, Ben removed the Selena poster from the wall so he could snort Adderall off her breasts. I got a terrible cold and couldn't find anything resembling a tissue in the apartment. Both of our credit cards were declined at the healthfood store.
Wherever you go, there you are.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“Romance was the best way I know to forget my obligations, to obliterate the self and pretend to be someone else.”
― Lena Dunham

“Even though she was weird and saved money and hadn’t had sex until she got married, I was still very fond of her.”
― Marian Keyes, Rachel's Holiday

“He snorts and pitches away the stub of his cigar. “But of course. Honor and glory, to be sure,” he says, and I look into his eyes and I know that he is thinking of what he has seen in the way of war—the mud, the filth, the hunger, the burning towns, the ravaged women, the murdered children, the battles where men fall rank upon rank before the merciless cannons like wheat before a scythe, and, finally, after it’s all over and the butcher’s bill is added up, the sickening sweet stink of the honored dead as their bodies lie rotting on the battlefield.”
― L.A. Meyer, My Bonny Light Horseman: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, in Love and War

“It's the outside world that's the prison. The outside world of jobs and cars and cell phones and apartments and grocery stores. Appropriate clothing, plans for a Saturday night, loneliness.”
― Nic Sheff, We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction

“The world's turning a whole lot faster than it should be.”
― Nic Sheff, We All Fall Down: Living with Addiction

“The emptiness in my stomach—the well digging down—the nausea—the aching won’t leave me. It’s profound—consuming. I feel like curling up, serpentine on the floor, crying. I need a thousand pounds of heroin. I need to drown myself in methamphetamine. I need pills, weed, vials of liquid acid.
Or maybe—maybe—I just need to get sober.”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“Even just saying I’m sorry feels so meaningless—like I’m trying to put a Band-Aid on a shotgun wound.”
― Nic Sheff, Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines

“Psychologists call that state of deluded madness "narcissistic love."
I call it "my twenties.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“Moreover, when I see Felipe fly off the handle in public, it messes around with my cherished personal narrative about what a gentle and tenderhearted guy I have chosen to love, and that, frankly, pisses me off more than anything else. If there is one indignity I shall never endure gracefully, it is watching people mess around with my most cherished personal narratives about them.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“To my mind, Celia Ray was perfection. She was New York City’s very distillation—a glittering composite of sophistication and mystery. I would endure any filth or befouling, just to have access to her.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

“Drunk, pinwheel-eyed, briny-blooded, brainless, weightless—Celia and I spun through New York City that summer on currents of pure electricity. Instead of walking, we rocketed. There was no focus; there was just a constant search for the vivid. We missed nothing, but we also missed everything.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, City of Girls

“It's the unwritten law of small-town folks: we guard one another. That Southern brand of trust is stronger than whiskey, and, when broken, it burns even more.”
― Emery Lord, Open Road Summer

“I know I act like I don't have a care in the world… but, Jonah, I've prowled the dirtiest back alleys of sadness, okay? And I know what it's like to fight for your life on those mean streets. So if you need someone to vent to or someone to be quiet with or someone to talk your ear off, I can be that person. I'm not scared of the dark places.”
― Emery Lord, When We Collided

“She sighs, resigning herself to my whims, as everyone eventually does.”
― Emery Lord, When We Collided

“I wanted another drink; I wanted another bottle; I wanted to drain the river Lethe till I was ready to be born again.”
― Sebastian Faulks, Where My Heart Used to Beat

“I lead a simple life now. I am foolish, an old man in love, a dreamer who dreams of nothing but reading to Allie and holding her whenever I can. I am a sinner with many faults and a man who believes in magic, but I am too old to change and too old to care.”
― Nicholas Sparks

“Men play at life. They use important words like principles and duty, honour and beliefs. But women have to sort things out. Wrap up the sandwiches. Mend broken knees and broken hearts. Clean surfaces.”
― Dave Appleby, Motherdarling

“School is boring. University? You must be joking. Three more years of boredom? Then you get a boring job and live a boring life. Die when you’re bored enough.”
― Dave Appleby, Motherdarling