Irene > Irene's Quotes

“I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.”
― Herman Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
― Charles Bukowski, Women

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
― Charles Bukowski

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another!”
― Douglas McGrath

“I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding— certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of other so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Why it's simply impassible!
Alice: Why, don't you mean impossible?
Door: No, I do mean impassible. (chuckles) Nothing's impossible!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking-Glass

“We live for books.”
― Umberto Eco

“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”
― Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride...and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well...maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
― William Faulkner, Essays, Speeches & Public Letters

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“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

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.”
― Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way

“This is the seashore. Neither land nor sea. It’s a place that does not exist.”
― Alessandro Baricco, Ocean Sea

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

“The book I'm looking for,' says the blurred figure, who holds out a volume similar to yours, 'is the one that gives the sense of the world after the end of the world, the sense that the world is the end of everything that there is in the world, that the only thing there is in the world is the end of the world.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“It is only through the confining act of writing that the immensity of the nonwritten becomes legible”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Per questa donna […] leggere vuol dire spogliarsi d’ogni intenzione e d’ogni partito preso, per essere pronta a cogliere una voce che si fa sentire quando meno ci s’aspetta, una voce che viene non si sa da dove, da qualche parte al di là del libro, al di là dell’autore, al di là delle convenzioni della scrittura: dal non detto, da quello che il mondo non ha ancora detto di sé e non ha ancora le parole per dire.”
― Italo Calvino If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King

“- E come la riconosco? Sono successi dieci anni, un sacco di tempo.
- "Guaglio", il tempo non è un sacco, magari è un bosco. Se hai conosciuto la foglia, poi riconosci l’albero. Se l’hai vista negli occhi, la ritroverai. Pure se è passato un bosco di tempo.”
― Erri De Luca, Il giorno prima della felicità

“Strano sapersi perduti tutti i giorni e non dirsi mai addio”
― Erri De Luca, Tre cavalli