Catherine > Catherine's Quotes

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Some people ask: “Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?” Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general—but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul--BOOKS.”
― Emily Dickinson

“One need not be a chamber to be haunted.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“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 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

“Fear cuts deeper than swords.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn't have.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“Watching me, judging me, smelling the crippling failure oozing from my skin, my desperation clawing and all-consuming panic drenching me as I gape in horror at the world and wonder why everyone is smiling and looking at me with secret knowledge of my aching shame.”
― Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis

“The suffering of being imprisoned rests in the fact that it is impossible, at any time, to escape from oneself.”
― Kōbō Abe

“I had a love affair with books, with characters and their words. Books kept me company. When the voices of the book faded, as with the last long chord of a record, the back cover crinkling closed, I could swear I heard a door click shut.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“For me, the first sign of oncoming madness is that I'm unable to write.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“All of us carry around countless bags of dusty old knickknacks dated from childhood: collected resentments, long list of wounds of greater or lesser significance, glorified memories, absolute certainties that later turn out to be wrong. Humans are emotional pack rats. These bags define us.”
― Marya Hornbacher

“That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Is there no way out of the mind?”
― Sylvia Plath

“There is, in fact, an incredible freedom in having nothing left to lose.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“Sometimes I wish I could walk around with a HANDLE WITH CARE sign stuck to my forehead.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. Dr. Sterling was right about that. I loved it because I thought it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“I mean, if you were to find a shattered mirror, find all the pieces, all the shards and all the tiny chips, and have whatever skill and patience it took to put all that broken glass back together so that it was complete once again, the restored mirror would still be spiderwebbed with cracks, it would still be a useless glued version of its former self, which could show only fragmented reflections of anyone looking into it. Some things are beyond repair. And that was me.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

“I began to feel like I was wearing a sign on my forehead that said FUCKED UP in big neon letters.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia