maísa > maísa's Quotes

“Reading took me away from myself, so I tried to be reading all the time.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Case for Jamie

“I felt it. Felt everything. I knew I wanted to erase myself from the top down, like a drawing, and that still I wanted someone to touch my edges and tell me that they loved me despite them.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Case for Jamie

“Just because you know something about yourself doesn’t mean you should be forgiven for it.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Case for Jamie

“In Senegal, the polite expression for saying someone died is to say his or her library has burned. When I first heard the phrase, I didn’t understand it, but over time I came to realize it was perfect. Our minds and souls contain volumes inscribed by our experiences and emotions; each individual’s consciousness is a collection of memories we’ve cataloged and stored inside us, a private library of a life lived.”
― Susan Orlean, The Library Book

“Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“I’m having a hard time writing about Sunday. Getting the long hollow feeling of Sundays. No mail and faraway lawn mowers, the hopelessness.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past. Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse. If I let them in, just one self-indulgent crack, whap, the door will fling open gales of pain ripping through my heart blinding my eyes with shame breaking cups and bottles knocking down jars shattering windows stumbling bloody on spilled sugar and broken glass terrified gagging until with a final shudder and sob I shut the heavy door. Pick up the pieces one more time.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“The world just goes along. Nothing much matters, you know? I mean really matters. but then sometimes, just for a second, you get this grace, this belief that it does matter, a whole lot.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“The people who were content with each other spoke as little as those who bristled with resentment or boredom; it was the rhythm of their speech that differed, like a lazy tennis ball batted back and forth or the quick swattings of a fly. *”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“The space between two shores is the ocean and being caught in between feels like drowning. And, really, what is the point of tears among so much salt water?”
― Trung Le Nguyen, The Magic Fish

“Joy is a precious thing. And precious things are few. So we learn to hold on to them.”
― Trung Le Nguyen, The Magic Fish