Arifa > Arifa's Quotes

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes--everywhere. Until it's every breath I breathe. I'm going to go out like a fucking meteor!”
― Audre Lorde

“We get trapped in our own little bubbles, and even though the world is a wide and mysterious place, our bubbles keep us safe from that. To our detriment.” She sighed. “But it’s so easy because there’s something soothing about routine. Day in and day out, it’s always the same. When we’re shaken from that, when that bubble bursts, it can be hard to understand all that we’ve missed.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“We should always make time for the things we like. If we don't, we might forget how to be happy.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

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

“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“A home isn’t always the house we live in. It’s also the people we choose to surround ourselves with. You may not live on the island, but you can’t tell me it’s not your home. Your bubble, Mr. Baker. It’s been popped. Why would you allow it to grow around you again?”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“Just because you don’t experience prejudice in your everyday doesn’t stop it from existing for the rest of us.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“Days of slow walking are very long: they make you live longer, because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every second to breathe, to deepen, instead of filling them up by straining the joints…”
― Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

“By walking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history. Being someone is all very well for smart parties where everyone is telling their story, it's all very well for psychologists' consulting rooms. But isn't being someone also a social obligation which trails in its wake – for one has to be faithful to the self-portrait – a stupid and burdensome fiction? The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone; for the walking body has no history, it is just an eddy in the stream of immemorial life.”
― Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

“silence usually taught him more than the company of others.”
― Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking

“When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.”
― Maya Angelou

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“The world had changed a great deal, but the little rules, contracts and customs had not, which meant the world hadn't actually changed at all.”
― Cho Nam-Joo, 82년생 김지영

“While offenders were in fear of losing a small part of their privilege, the victims were running the risk of losing everything.”
― Cho Nam-Joo, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

“What do you want from us? The dumb girls are too dumb, the smart girls are too smart, and the average girls are too unexceptional?”
― Cho Nam-Joo, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

“Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what?... All will end in death, all!”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”
― George Eliot

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.”
― Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Between grief and nothing I will take grief.”
― William Faulkner, The Wild Palms