Izzy > Izzy's Quotes

“Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books. A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense!
The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.
Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person's whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“if people are denied certain parts of relationships they need as children, they hunt for these parts as adults.”
― Lisa Taddeo, Three Women

“Sleep is not sweet but dumb. It is a gap in time, a gap in pain.”
― Lisa Taddeo, Three Women

“Songs can be incredibly prophetic, like subconscious warnings or messages to myself, but I often don't know what I'm trying to say till years later. Or a prediction comes true and I couldn't do anything to stop it, so it seems like a kind of useless magic.”
― Florence Welch, Useless Magic: Lyrics and Poetry

“Sometimes I wish for falling
Wish for the release
Wish for falling through the air
To give me some relief
Because falling's not the problem
When I'm falling I'm in peace
It's only when I hit the ground
It causes all the grief”
― Florence Welch

“I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

“. . I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have what I like or if my tastes are too various to be sustained by one of anything.”
― Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

“Women want to be loved like roses. They spend hours perfecting their eyebrows and toes and inventing irresistible curls that fall by accident down the back of their necks from otherwise austere hair-dos. They want their lover to remember the way they held a glass. They want to haunt.”
― Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

“...chivalry was just another nefarious masculine scheme to keep women in their place.”
― Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

“Virginia Woolf said that people read fiction the same way they listen to gossip, so if you're reading this at all then you might as well read my private asides written so he'll read it. I have to be extremely funny and wonderful around him just to get his attention at all and it's a shame to let it all go for one person.”
― Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.

“I am troubled, immeasurably
by your eyes.
I am struck by the feather
of your soft reply.
The sound of glass
speaks quick, disdain
and conceals
what your eyes fight
to explain.”
― Jim Morrison, Wilderness: The Lost Writings, Vol. 1

“The Night is young
& full of rest
I can’t describe
the way she’s dress’d
She’ll pander to some strange
requests
Anything that you suggest
Anything to please her guest.”
― Jim Morrison, The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, Vol. 1: Wilderness

“No one thought up being. He who thinks he has, step forward.”
― Jim Morrison, Wilderness: The Lost Writings, Vol. 1

“Tell them you came, and saw, and looked
into my eyes and saw the shadow
of the guard receding.
Thoughts in time and out of season,
the hitchinker stood by the side of the road
and levelled his thumb in the
calm calculus of reason.

[...]
Why does my mind circle around you?
Why do planets wonder what it
would be like to be you?
All your soft wild promises were words,
birds, endlessly in flight.”
― Jim Morrison, Wilderness: The Lost Writings, Vol. 1

“She dances in a ring of fire and throws off the challenge with a shrug.”
― Jim Morrison, Wilderness: The Lost Writings, Vol. 1

“The grand highway is crowded with lovers
and searchers
and leavers
so eager to please, and to forget. Wilderness”
― Jim Morrison, Wilderness: The Lost Writings, Vol. 1

“What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And it that's sinful, then let me be damned for it!”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“Don't you just love those long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn't just an hour - but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands - and who knows what to do with it?”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“Physical beauty is passing - a transitory possession - but beauty of the mind, richness of the spirit, tenderness of the heart - I have all these things - aren't taken away but grow! Increase with the years!”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“Some things are not forgiveable. Deliberate cruelty is not forgiveable. It is the most unforgiveable thing in my opinion, and the one thing in which I have never, ever been guilty.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“I don't believe in "original sin." I don't believe in "guilt." I don't believe in villains or heroes - only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.
This is so simple I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm sure it's true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that's why I don't understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“He acts like an animal, has an animal's habits! Eats like one, moves like one, talks like one! There's even something -sub-human -something not quite to the stage of humanity yet! Yes, something - ape-like about him, like one of those pictures I've seen in - anthropological studies! Thousands and thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is - Stanley Kowalski - survivor of the Stone Age! Bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle! And you - you here - waiting for him! Maybe he'll strike you or maybe grunt and kiss you! That is, if kisses have been discovered yet! Night falls and the other apes gather! There in the front of the cave, all grunting like him, and swilling and gnawing and hulking! His poker night! - you call it - this party of apes! Somebody growls - some creature snatches at something - the fight is on! God! Maybe we are a long way from beng made in God's image, but Stella - my sister - there has been some progress since then! Such things as art - as poetry and music - such kinds of new light have come into the world since then! In some kinds of people some tendered feelings have had some little beginning! That we have got to make grow! And cling to, and hold as our flag! In this dark march towards what-ever it is we're approaching . . . Don't - don't hang back with the brutes!”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“Stanley
throws the screen door of the kitchen open and comes in. He is of
medium height, about five feet eight or nine, and strongly, compactly
built. Animal joy in his being is implicit in all his movements and
attitudes. Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure
with women, the giving and taking of it, not with weak indulgence,
dependently, but with the power and pride of a richly feathered male
bird among hens. Branching out from this complete and satisfying
center are all the auxiliary channels of his life, such as his heartiness
with men, his appreciation of rough humor, his love of good drink and
food and games, his car, his radio, everything that is his, that bears his
emblem of the gaudy seed-bearer. He sizes women up at a glance, with
sexual classifications, crude images flashing into his mind and
determining the way he smiles at them.”
― Tenessee Williams

“It’s always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“She always made sure the bad was outweighed by so much good. I...well, I didn't do that for her. I made it fifty-fifty. Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“Passion is...it's fire. And fire is great, man. But we're made of water. Water is how we keep living. Water is what we need to survive.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six