simran > simran's Quotes

“To me, the hallmark of the modern mind is that it loves to wander from its subject.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Pet names are a persistant remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.”
― Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

“We protect them and save them and study them. After a time, we realize—some of us slower than others—that they are protecting us, saving us, studying us.”
― Christine Coulson, Metropolitan Stories

“Our lives are devoted to our absence—to the idea that no trace of ourselves should be left in our work.”
― Christine Coulson, Metropolitan Stories

“Melvin thought about the museum inhaling so much of the world—all that history, all that spiritual juice, all the passions and laments of each visitor—without ever really exhaling.”
― Christine Coulson, Metropolitan Stories

“Some curators are great scholars, others great exhibition makers, still others, superb collectors. It is rare to have a curator like Peter, who excels at all three.”
― Christine Coulson, Metropolitan Stories

“Survival is a funny business, too. A losing game. Literally. They love us, and we lose them all. The ones who made us, the ones who gave us, the ones who sat down and played with us, the ones who held us, or just laid eyes on us. The ones who bought, traded, and sold us. Cleaned us, redeemed us, brought back the sheen on us. Loved us. Learned everything there is to know about us.”
― Christine Coulson, Metropolitan Stories

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Psychology is a terrible a word.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It seems to me that psychology is only another word for what the ancients called fate.”
― Donna Tartt

“For if the modern mind is whimsical and discursive, the classical mind is narrow, unhesitating, relentless.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Do you really think what we do is work?

- What else should I call it?

I should call it the most glorious kind of play.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I mean, this man was not Voltaire we killed. But still. It’s a shame. I feel bad about it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“What patience they must have, what deep attachment to words!”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“The dictionary’s very flaws made the exertions and enthusiasm of its compilers real to his imagination.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“What if the interior of a room mirrors the interior of its inhabitant? he wondered. That would make him someone who stored up words but couldn’t put them to use, a dry-as-dust bore.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“no matter how much data he gathered, just when he thought he had captured a word, it would slip through his fingers, crumble to bits, and vanish.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“The idea that the woman he loved might ridicule him made him unbearably sad.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“He knew he needed to say something, but he also knew that no matter how big a dictionary he consulted, he would never come up with the right words.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“The moment you thought you had captured words in a volume, they became a wriggling mass impossible to catch hold of, slipping by you, changing their shape as if to laugh off the compilers’ exhaustion and passion, and issuing a challenge: “Try again! Catch us if you can!”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“However much food you ate, as long as you were alive, you would experience hunger again, and words, however you managed to capture them, would disperse again like phantoms into the void.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“Even if no one could ever stay full forever, he was sure she would go on giving her all to her abilities in the kitchen as long as there was even one person who wanted to eat good food. And even if no dictionary could ever be perfect, as long as there were people who used words to convey their thoughts, he would pursue his calling with all his might.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“No, experience had taught Nishioka that a woman attached supreme importance to whether or not a man put her first.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“Let me die in spring/under the cherries in bloom/and let it be/in Kisaragi month/at the time of the full moon!”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“The more you took a project to heart, the more your expectations of others on the team were bound to rise. The same way that if you loved someone, you wanted them to love you back.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“Maybe psychologically people just weren’t built to work only for money.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“As you can see, a preponderance of Japanese words start with sounds from the first three columns of the kana syllabary: those headed by a, ka, and sa.” Kishibe compared the various dictionaries. In each one, words from those first three columns took up more than half the pages. “Whereas words from the last three columns, those headed by ya, ra, and wa, take up very little space. That’s because few wago begin with those sounds.” “Wago?” “Native Japanese words, as opposed to kango”—Chinese loanwords—“and gairaigo,” (words borrowed from foreign countries other than China).”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“Awakening to the power of words—the power not to hurt others but to protect them, to tell them things, to form connections with them—had taught her to probe her own mind and inclined her to make allowances for other people’s thoughts and feelings.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage

“He says that memories are words. A fragrance or a flavor or a sound can summon up an old memory, but what’s really happening is that a memory that had been slumbering and nebulous becomes accessible in words.”
― Shion Miura, The Great Passage