Olivia > Olivia's Quotes

“I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted just like that, and it didn't mean anything? What then?”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Wash your dirty dishes like you are washing the infant Jesus. ”
― Kerouac

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ...”
― Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales

“We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.”
― Lynda Barry

“All cruelty springs from weakness.”
― Seneca, Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency

“Do you know a cure for me?"

"Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water."

"Salt water?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”
― Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“...Failure cannot be erased. It is built in to a life and helps us grow. Failure cannot be erased, but it can be understood.

Most people carry around a load of feeling that they bury or pretend is not there because it is too painful and alarming to cope with or because it involved unbearable guilt. Anger against a parent, for example.


I knew the tide of woe was rising, that woe that seizes me like anger, and is a form of anger, and I didn’t know what to do to stop it, so I got up and picked flowers, cooked my dinner, looked at the news, all the same usual routine that can ward off the devils or suddenly clear the air as when a thunderstorm seems to be coming and then dissipates….it always happens when there is a galaxy of problems that get knit together into one huge outcry against the sense of being abandoned or orphanhood…”
― May Sarton, Recovering: A Journal

“The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
― Bell Hooks

“Man is spirit--that is all man needs to know; and spirit is triumphant over matter.”
― White Eagle, The Quiet Mind: Sayings of White Eagle

“The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet al the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions