Elaine Mulligan > Elaine's Quotes

“I don’t even know what I’m writing, I have no idea, I don’t know anything, and I’m not reading over it, and I’m not correcting my style, and I’m writing just for the sake of writing, just for the sake of writing more to you… My precious, my darling, my dearest!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Poor Folk

“Before you there lie the Steppes, my darling—only the Steppes, the naked Steppes, the Steppes that are as bare as the palm of my hand. There there live only heartless old women and rude peasants and drunkards. There the trees have already shed their leaves. There abide but rain and cold.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Poor Folk

“Sometimes I look back and I am shocked. Everyday of my life I have prepared for success, worked for it, waited for it, and you don't notice how the days pass until nearly a lifetime is finished. Then it hits you--the thing you have been waiting for has already gone by. And it was going in the other direction. It's like I've been waiting on the wrong side of the road for a bus that was already full." p. 265”
― Monica Ali, Brick Lane

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.”
― Isaac Babel, The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel

“Even at the time—twenty years old—I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at an office desk ten hours a day. There is no particular daring in this vow, but I have not broken it and shall not do so. The wisdom of my grandfathers sat in my head: we are born for the pleasure of work, fighting, love, we are born for that and nothing else. (Guy de Maupassant)”
― Isaac Babel, Red Cavalry and Other Stories

“A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.”
― Isaac Babel

“When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time. The secret of its success rests in a crux that is barely discernible. One's fingertips must grasp the key, gently warming it. And then the key must be turned once, not twice.”
― Isaac Babel

“No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.”
― Isaac Babel

“No iron can pierce the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the right time.”
― Isaac Babel

“My voice rings down through thousands of years to coil around your body and give you strength, you who have wept in direct sunlight, who have hungered in invisible chains, tremble to the cadence of my legacy: An army of lovers shall not fail.”
― Rita Mae Brown, The Hand That Cradles the Rock

“Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.”
― Rita Mae Brown, Riding Shotgun

“I would not regret putting a hole in your arrogant chest, only it would be deflected when it hit that piece of rock you call a heart.”
― Laurie McBain, Devil's Desire

“Resistance, however, is useless. (1939)”
― A. E. Van Vogt

“Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.”
― Victoria Holt

“I loved Mr. Darcy far more than any of my own husbands.”
― Rumer Godden

“It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.”
― Rumer Godden, The Dolls' House