Maleka > Maleka's Quotes

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“you are right where you should be / now act like it”
― Michelle Tea, The Beautiful: Collected Poems

“I am the woman who glows in the dark, I'll stay awake forever if I have to.”
― Elena Avila, Woman Who Glows in the Dark: A Curandera Reveals Traditional Aztec Secrets of Physical and Spiritual Health

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus

“Your war drum ain't / louder than this breath.”
― Suheir Hammad, Zaatar Diva

“If you put the words on a page and you believe in them, then it’s a poem.”
― Ewuare Osayande

“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness.”
― Lemony Snicket

“She wanted me to remember that pleasure is political--for the capacity to relax and play renews the spirit and makes it possible for us to come to the work of writing clearer, ready for the journey. (bell hooks about Toni Cade Bambara)”
― Bell Hooks, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work

“For people sometimes believed that it was safer to live with complaints,
was necessary to cooperate with grief, was all right to become an accomplice in self-ambush...
Take heart to flat out decide to be well and stride into the future sane and whole.”
― Toni Cade Bambara

“I am one beautiful and powerful son of a bitch,' he told himself. 'Smart as a whip, respected, prosperous, beloved and valuable. I have the right to be healthy, happy and rich, for I am the baddest player in this arena or any other. I love myself more than I love money and pretty women and fine clothes. I love myself more than I love neat gardens and healthy babies and a good gospel choir. I love myself as I love The Law. I love myself in error and in correctness, waking or sleeping, sneezing, tipsy, or fabulously brilliant I love myself doing the books or sitting down to a good game of poker. I love myself making love expertly, or tenderly and shyly, or clumsily and inept. I love myself as I love The Master's Mind,' he continued his litany, having long ago stumbled upon the prime principle as a player--that self-love produces the gods and the gods are genius. It took genius to run the Southwest Community Infirmary. So he made the rounds of his hospital the way he used to make the rounds of his houses to keep the tops spinning, reciting declarations of self-love.”
― Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters

“Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what's out there ain't gonna be out there.”
― Toni Cade Bambara

“The dream is real, my friends. The failure to make it work is the unreality.”
― Toni Cade Bambara

“Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.”
― Toni Cade Bambara

“As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible.”
― Toni Cade Bambara, Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara

“Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It's just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems 1956-1968

“If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Remember when I moved in you and the holy dove was moving too, and every breath we drew was, "Hallelujah.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Maybe we have only a finite amount of love to give. We're born with our portion, and if we love and are not loved enough in return, it's depleted.”
― Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

“Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their
lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.”
― Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time.”
― Abdu'l-Baha

“My heart is in a constant state of thanksgiving.”
― Abdul-Baha

“If death is the absence of life, then death's death is life.”
― Sun Ra