Jane Reye > Jane's Quotes

“Going There

Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.”
― Jack Gilbert, The Great Fires

“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“If there is on earth, and among all these things of nothing, a belief worthy of adoration, if there is anything holy, pure and sublime, anything answering that immoderate desire for the infinite and the vague that we call the soul, it is art.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman

“Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?”
― Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

“I was moving in a narrow range between busy distractedness and a pervasive sadness whose granules seemed to enter each cell, weighing it down... I ghosted between islands of anxiety... a fatigue that dulled my zest, decanted it. Sorrow felt like a marble coat I couldn’t shed.”
― Diane Ackerman, One Hundred Names for Love: A Memoir

“I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.”
― Gustave Flaubert, November

“I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me. ”
― Anaïs Nin

“He impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue - a C. Auguste Dupin Short Story

“Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins.”
― Gustave Flaubert, November

“How we keep these dead souls in our hearts. Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“And so I will take back up my poor life, so plain and so tranquil, where phrases are adventures and the only flowers I gather are metaphors.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“I am astonished
by the various kisses we’re capable of.
Each from different heights
diminished, which is simply the law.
And the big bruise
from the long fall looked perfectly white
in a few years.
That astounded me most of all.”
― Stephen Dunn, New and Selected Poems, 1974-1994

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Birth, coupling, death. The more she thinks about it, the more it seems that that is all there is: a wheel turning over and over, moving so fast that sometimes you cannot even make out the spokes. It is a wonder there is any room for poetry.”
― Sarah Dunant, In The Name of the Family

“The older one becomes the quicker the present fades into sepia and the past looms up in glorious technicolour”
― Beryl Bainbridge

“I’ve always known, on a purely intellectual level, that our separateness and isolation are an illusion. We’re all made of the same thing—the blown-out pieces of matter formed in the fires of dead stars. I’ve just never felt that knowledge in my bones until that moment, there, with you. And it’s because of you.”
― Blake Crouch, Dark Matter

“By dint of railing at idiots, one runs the risk of becoming an idiot oneself.”
― Gustave Flaubert, A Dictionary of Idiocy: The Ulitmate Guide to Curious, Shocking and General Ignorance

“Remember what it was like when you’d be getting ready to jump rope... two people were turning it, and you were waiting for exactly the right moment to jump in? I feel like that all the time.”
― Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge

“She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“Past events leave traces in the memory like an ax chopping wood. Chips fly; they remain where they fall even after the wood has been used to light the stove.”
― Magdalena Tulli, Dreams and Stones

“Wisdom lies in voluntary finitude and a timely change of heart: until maturity, multiplying the inclusions, up to the limit of natural faculty and moral harmony; afterwards, gladly relinquishing zone after zone of vegetation, and letting the snow-peak of integrity rise to what height it may.”
― George Santayana, Realms of Being

“I believed in a return to Nature once. But how can we return to Nature when we have never been with her? Today, I believe that we must discover Nature. After many conquests we shall attain simplicity. It is our heritage.”
― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it”
― Gustave Flaubert

“It's very difficult to look at the World
and into your heart at the same time.
In between, a life has passed.”
― Jim Harrison, After Ikkyu & Other Poems

“He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed.”
― E.M. Forster, Maurice