E.B. > E.B.'s Quotes

“Рукописи не горят”
― Булгаков, Мастер и Маргарита

“Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the future.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”
― Lemony Snicket

“They say love's like a bus, and if you wait long enough another one will come along, but not in this place where the buses are slow and most of the cute ones are gay.”
― Daniel Handler, Adverbs

“I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring.”
― David Bowie

“And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations.
They're quite aware of what they're going through.

- Changes”
― David Bowie

“Turn and face the strange changes.”
― David Bowie, Changes Sheet Music

“Speak in extremes, it'll save you time. ”
― David Bowie

“There's a terror in knowing what the world is about”
― David Bowie

“I'm an instant star, just add water.”
― David Bowie

“Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim 'I do enjoy myself' or 'I am horrified' we are insincere. 'As far as I feel anything, it is enjoyment, horror' - it's no more than that really, and a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent.”
― E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“I think it is all a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger and stranger it becomes”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

“I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness―in a landscape selected at random―is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern―to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“One is always at home in one's past...”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

“Mnemosyne, one must admit, has shown herself to be a very careless girl.”
― Vladimir Nabokov , Speak, Memory

“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory

“Caress the detail, the divine detail.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Grammar is a piano I play by ear.”
― Joan Didion, Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations

“There's a point when you go with what you've got. Or you don't go.”
― Joan Didion

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”
― Leo Tolstoy