anna > anna's Quotes

“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.”
― richard siken

“Moments never stay, whether or not you ask them, they do not care, no moment cares, and the ones you wish could stretch out like a hammock for you to lie in, well, those moments leave the quickest and take everything good with them, little burglars, those moments, those hours, those days you loved the most.”
― Catherine Lacey, Nobody Is Ever Missing

“Taylor Markham," said Raffaela, "I'm going to say a prayer for you." And although I wanted to mock her and explain I didn't believe in anything or anyone, I realised that no one had ever prayed for me before. So I let her.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“You may forget but
let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us”
― Sappho, The Art of Loving Women

“Go to bed, you fool," Calcifer said sleepily. "You're drunk."
"Who, me?" said Howl. "I assure you, my friends, I am cone sold stober." He got up and stalked upstairs, feeling for the wall as if he thought it might escape him unless he kept in touch with it. His bedroom door did escape him.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I'm thinking. Jonah Griggs takes my hand under the table and links my fingers with his and I know that I would sacrifice almost anything just to keep this state of mind, for the rest of the week at least.”
― Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road

“He's my father!" she bellowed, pointing to Trevanion.

"Vestie!" Beatriss said firmly, stopping to stare up at her. "I'll snip at the tongue if I ever see it in such a way again! Trevanion, speak to her."

Vestie hung her head, shamefaced.

"Vestie," he said, his voice still gentle.

"Yes, Father."

"Shout it out louder, my love. Shout it out louder.”
― Melina Marchetta, Froi of the Exiles

“someone will remember us
I say
even in another time”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“However, this sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had Enjolras subjugated him? By his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith soar in Enjolras. He had need of Enjolras. That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself having occurred to him.”
― Victor Hugo

“One might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In that sequence, O and P are inseparable. You might just as well say O and P as Orestes and Pylades.
A true satellite of Enjolras, Grantaire lived within this circle of young men. He dwelt among them, only with them was he happy, he followed them everywhere. His pleasure was to watch these figures come and go in a wine-induced haze. They put up with him because of his good humour.
In his belief, Enjolras looked down on this sceptic; and in his sobriety, on this drunkard. He spared him a little lordly pity.
Grantaire was an unwanted Pylades. Always snubbed by Enjolras, spurned, rebuffed and back again for more, he said of Enjolras, ‘What marmoreal magnificence'.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“I’m scared I’m going to spend the rest of my life in a state of yearning, regardless of where I am.”
― Melina Marchetta, The Piper's Son

“Raising his eyes to look directly into Linus's face was maybe the scariest thing he'd had to do all day long, but it was only the free-falling terror that always accompanied hope.”
― Patrick Ness, Release

“Adam’s stomach was tumbling with how much Linus knew and how he’d found it all out (it would turn out he knew as much as nearly everyone else in the school, which was a lot, but it also turned out that – in that unreachable, possible world – most of them actually liked Adam or at least didn’t actively wish him harm, so they’d given his sorrow some space; when Adam thought about it now, it still made his head swim, still made him blush, still made him wish he could crawl under a blanket and die there forever) – but looking at Linus, he saw no malice, no gossip, saw instead someone who might actually know.”
― Patrick Ness, Release

“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that?

And I said,
Where do I put it down?”
― Anne Carson, Glass and God

“You look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
                    but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
                                                                        but then he’s still left with his hands.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling, and they’re only a few steps behind you, finding the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren’t stitched up quite right, the place they could almost slip right into through if the skin wasn’t trying to keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side of the theater where the curtain keeps rising. I crawled out the window and ran into the woods. I had to make up all the words myself. The way they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made this place for you. A place for to love me. If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“My silk heart’s
filled with lights,
lost bells,
lilies and bees,
and I’ll go far,
further than these mountains,
further than the seas,
close to the stars
and I’ll say to Christ,
Lord, give me back
the child’s soul I once had”
― Federico García Lorca, The Selected Poems

“I alone with my undiscovered love,
without heart, without tears,
towards the skies’ impossible roof
with a huge sun to console me.”
― Federico García Lorca, The Selected Poems

“Today in my heart
a vague trembling of stars,
but my way is lost
in the soul of the mist.
Light lops my wings.”
― Federico García Lorca, The Selected Poems

“... Mistrzu, czemuś smutny? ...
... Myślę ...
... Odgoń myśl, jam jest miłość ...
... A ja ból i groza ...
Siadł przy Henryku. Cisza. Dłonie Henryka szukają jego drobnych dłoni. Gdy siedzą tak obok siebie, prąd potężny płynie przez złączone ręce, które są najdoskonalszem narzędziem rozkoszy. Szaleństwo rozpala się w oczach Henryka, który w jego źrenicach widzi zarys swej twarzy płonącej gorączką.
I nagle pożar wybuchł w dłoniach drżących!
Słychać namiętny szept: Chcę ciebie... Chcę ciebie...
W przegięciu niedorzecznem pocałunek. Gorący i nieprzytomny. Potem głowa o przepysznej rzeźbie legła na kolanach Henryka, a ten wżera się ustami w blade, rozchylone usta Diadumena.
Cisza dzwoni tętnem krwi rozszalałej i echem obłędu. Gorączka w skroniach. Ociężałość i ból w oczach. Lampa gaśnie.
I dobrze, niech będzie mrok.
Bije małe serce chłopięce, usta płoną żądzą całowania, jak omdlały mu leci przez ręce i u kolan bezsilnie się słania. Jak namiętna jest dusza ta młoda, jakże dziwne jest to miłowanie: spotykanie, rozstanie, spotkanie, gniew i rozkosz - kwietniowa pogoda.”
― Józef Czechowicz, Reflektor

“Neoslavery is an economic condition, a small knot of men exercising the property rights of their established economic order, organizing and controlling the life style of the slave as if he were in fact property. Succinctly: an economic condition which manifests itself in the total loss or absence of self-determination.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Pigs come here to feed on the garbage heap for two reasons really, the first half because they can do no other work, frustrated men soon to develop sadistic mannerisms; and the second half, sadists out front, suffering under the restraints placed upon them by an equally sadistic-vindictive society. The sadist knows that to practice his religion upon the society at large will bring down upon his head their sadistic reaction. Killing is great fun, but not at the risk of getting killed (note how they squeak and pull out their hair over losing even one). But the restraints come off when they walk through the compound gates. Their whole posture goes through a total metamorphosis. Inflict pain, satisfy the power complex, and get a check. How can the sick administer to the sick. In the well-ordered society prisons would not exist as such. If a man is ill he should be placed in a hospital, staffed by the very best of technicians. Men would never be separated from women. These places would be surfeited with equipment and meaningful programs, even if it meant diverting funds from another, or even from all other sectors of the economy. It’s socially self-destructive to create a monster and loose him upon the world.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Always they will promote competition (while they cooperate), division, mistrust, a sense of isolation. The antipodes of love. The M.O. of the fascist arrangement is always to protect the capitalist class by destroying the consciousness, the trust, the unity of the lower classes.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“The pig is an instrument of neoslavery, to be hated and avoided; he is pushed to the front by the men who exercise the unnatural right over property. You’ve heard the patronizing shit about the thin blue line that protects property and the owners of property. The pigs are not protecting you, your home, and its contents. Recall they never found the TV set you lost in that burglary. They’re protecting the unnatural right of a few men to own the means of all of our subsistence. The pig is protecting the right of a few private individuals to own public property!! The pig is merely the gun, the tool, a mentally inanimate utensil. It is necessary to destroy the gun, but destroying the gun and sparing the hand that holds it will forever relegate us to a defensive action, hold our revolution in the doldrums, ultimately defeat us. The animal that holds the gun, that has loosed the pig of war on us, is a bitter-ender, an intractable, gluttonous vulture who must eat at our hearts to live. Midas-motivated, never satisfied, everything he touches will turn into shit! Slaying the shitty pig will have absolutely no healing effect at all, if we leave this vulture to touch someone else. Spare the hand that holds the gun and it will simply fashion another.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“If you don’t make any more in wages than you need to live, you are a neoslave. You qualify if you cannot afford to leave California for New York. If you cannot visit Zanzibar, Havana, Peking, or even Paris when you get the urge, you are a slave. If you’re held in one spot on this earth because of your economic status, it is just the same as being held in one spot because you are the owner’s property.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“The Yankee dog that proposes to me that I should join him in containing the freedom of a Vietnamese or a Chinese brother of the revolution is going to get spat on. I don’t care how much he has to offer in the way of short-term material benefits. We must establish a true internationalism with other anticolonial peoples. Then we will be on the road of the true revolutionary. Only then can we expect to be able to seize the power that is rightfully ours, the power to control the circumstances of our day-to-day lives.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

“Western culture developed out of a very hostile environment. Rocks, snow, ice, long periods when the ground was too hard to be worked, when nothing could be produced from the soil, hunting became too important; accumulating, hoarding, hiding, protecting enough to last through the winter, things falling apart in winter, covetous glances at one’s neighbor’s goods. Would three or four thousand years of that kind of survival influence a culture? Would greed color itself into the total result, in a large way? Hunt, forage, store, hoard, hide, defend, the thing at stake!! Not very conducive to sensitivity, tenderness.”
― George L. Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson