Asli > Asli's Quotes

“I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.”
― John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“I wonder if the reason I tend to say yes to everything is because I deeply believe that I can survive anything.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“If something wants to be a story, it will be.”
― Scarlett Thomas, The End of Mr. Y

“That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.”
― Raymond Carver

“It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.”
― Raymond Carver

“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Boscombe Valley Mystery - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”
― Albert Einstein

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.”
― Nikolai V. Gogol

“Perfect nonsense goes on in the world. Sometimes there is no plausibility at all”
― Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, The Nose

“My unhappiness protects me from life.”
― Orhan Pamuk

“To survive, you must tell stories.”
― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before

“Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.”
― Milan Kundera

“You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.”
― Milan Kundera

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“War is what happens when language fails.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

“I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“When I look at my life I realise that the mistakes I have made, the things I really regret, were not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.”
― Jeanette Winterson

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”
― Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

“The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open. ”
― Philip Roth, The Dying Animal

“Literature takes a habit of mind that has disappeared. It requires silence, some form of isolation, and sustained concentration in the presence of an enigmatic thing.”
― Philip Roth