Bishal Gauchan > Bishal's Quotes

“Mine is not an obedient writing. I think that literature as any art has to be irreverent.”
― Reinaldo Arenas

“The people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“I shall tell them this story against the background of the county I grew up in and along the river I know and do not love very much. For I have discovered that there are other rivers.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted - that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong: maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong." - Muley”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Sure I got sins. Ever'body got sins. A sin is somepin you ain't sure about. Them people that's sure about ever'thing an' ain't got no sin-- well, with that kind a son-of-a-bitch, if I was God I'd kick their ass right outa heaven! I couldn' stand 'em!”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“He lived in a strange, silent house and looked out of it through calm eyes. He was a stranger to all the world, but he was not lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“They had long ago found out that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“But us, we got a job to do, and there's a thousand ways, and we don't know which one to take. And if I was to pray, it'd be for the folks that don't know which way to turn.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here 'I lost my land' is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate--'We lost *our* land.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“The passion to produce is very great. One man, who has not yet been assigned his little garden plot, is hopefully watering a jimson weed simply to have something of his own growing.”
― John Steinbeck, The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to The Grapes of Wrath

“For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“A man so hurt and so perplexed may turn in anger, even on people he loves.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis

“What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“But Gregor understood easily that it was not only consideration for him which prevented their moving, for he could easily have been transported in a suitable crate with a few air holes; what mainly prevented the family from moving was their complete hopelessness and the thought that they had been struck by a misfortune as none of their relatives and acquaintances had ever been hit.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis

“the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective "kafkaesque”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“Calm —indeed the calmest— reflection might be better than the most confused decisions”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the doors. But that would have to be risked.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis

“There’s a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start all over again!”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“The man from the country has not expected such difficulties; the law, he thinks, should be accessible to everyone and at all times; but as he now takes a closer look at the doorkeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose, his long, sparse, black Tartar beard, he decides that it is better, after all, to wait until he receives permission to enter.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“And now you intend to stay here with us in Riva?' asked the burgomaster. 'I do not,' said the hunter with a smile, and to excuse the jest he laid his hand on the burgomaster's knee. 'I am here, more than that I do not know. My boat has no rudder, it is driven by the wind that blows in the nethermost regions of death.”
― Franz Kafta

“It is to us artisans and tradesmen that the salvation of the fatherland is entrusted; but we are not equal to such a task; never, indeed, have we claimed that we were capable of performing it. It is a misunderstanding; and it is proving our ruin.”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“Then birds flew up like a shower of sparks, I followed them with my eyes and saw how they rose in a single breath, until they seemed no longer to be rising but I to be falling...”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
― Voltaire, Candide, or, Optimism

“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?'
That is a hard question,' said Candide.”
― Voltaire, Candide