Kat > Kat's Quotes

“I can explain myself: If you want to be safe, walk in the middle of the street. I’m not joking. You’ve been told to look both ways before crossing the street, and the sidewalk is your friend, right? Wrong. I’ve spent years walking sidewalks at night. I’ve looked around me when it was dark, when there were men following me, creeping out of alleyways, attempting to goad me into speaking to them and shouting obscenities at me when I wouldn’t, and I suddenly realised that the only place left to go was the middle of street. But why would I risk it? Because the odds are in my favour. In the States, someone is killed in a car accident on average every 12.5 minutes, while someone is raped on average every 2.5 minutes. Even when factoring in that, one, I am generously including ALL car-related accidents and not just those involving accidents, and two, that the vast majorities of rapes still go unreported […] And, thus, this is now the way I live my life: out in the open, in the middle of everything, because the middle of the street is actually the safest place to walk.”
― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go”
― Herman Hesse

“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do. ”
― Hermann Hesse

“Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.”
― Hermann Hesse, Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe

“Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.”
― Herman Hesse

“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.”
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

“There is no escape. You can't be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. Don't try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is- particularly the artist- particularly myself!”
― Hermann Hesse

“When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them with their faults.”
― Hermann Hesse, Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe

“People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.”
― Hermann Hesse

“What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.”
― Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak... surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Your talk had a glow that fought the darkness back.”
― John Holmes

“A dog is not "almost human", and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.”
― John Holmes

“For some folks death is release, and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country

“You get what anybody gets - you get a lifetime.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes

“She's realized the real problem with stories -- if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes

“DEATH: "Mostly they aren't too keen to see me. They fear the sunless lands. But they enter your realm each night without fear."

MORPHEUS: "And I am far more terrible than you, sister.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes & Nocturnes

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker