alex > alex's Quotes

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
― Audre Lorde

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“People were always saying how ugly Southern California was, especially when they came back from their summer vacations. They said it looked plastic or fake or whatever, and talked about all the cool things they saw in Ohio, where their grandparents lived. Or in Pennsylvania. The wall behind the arcade was made of giant sparkling white bricks, just like all the other buildings connected to it. There was graffiti on it, indecipherable gang writing. It was dark now and getting a little cold and then the super-bright lights they have behind stores to keep bums from sleeping by the dumpsters came on, and I thought, people who don’t think Southern California is the most beautiful place in the world are idiots and I hope they choke on their tongues.”
― John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I found myself remembering the day in kindergarten when the teachers showed us Dumbo, and I realized for the first time that all the kids in the class, even the bullies, rooted for Dumbo, against Dumbo's tormentors. Invariably they laughed and cheered, both when Dumbo succeeded and when bad things happened to his enemies. But they're you, I thought to myself. How did they not know? They didn't know. It was astounding, an astounding truth. Everyone thought they were Dumbo.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“But the Beatles turned out to be one of the things you couldn’t avoid, like alcohol, or death.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life.”
― Tony Kushner, Angels in America

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“My writing is sophisticated because I had a head start, because I am years in the making, because I am my mother and her mother before. When I write, I have the privilege of using a language that she fought her whole life to understand. When I speak in opposition, I am grateful my voice is uncensored. I do not take my freedom of speech, my abundance of books, my access to education, my ease of first language for granted. My mom is a writer. The difference is, she spent the first twenty years of her life surviving. I am a writer, who spent twenty years of my life fed and loved in a home and a classroom.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“Writing is the way I process the world. When I was given the opportunity to write this book, whatever God was up there said, You got your dream. I said, Actually I was hoping for a lighter topic, and God was like, Ha! Ha! You thought you got to choose. This was the topic I was given. If something else had happened to me, I would have written about that, too. When I get worked up over what happened, I tell myself, you are a pair of eyes. I'm a civilian who's been randomly selected to receive an all-access pass to the court system. Feelings will include invasion, shame, isolation, cruelty. My job is to observe , feel, document, report. What am I learning and seeing that other people can't see? What doorways does my suffering lead to? People sometimes day, I can't imagine. How do I make them imagine? I write to show how victims are treated at this moment in time, to record the temperature of our culture. This is a marker...”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name

“What they were really saying is, victims can’t write. Victims aren’t smart, capable, or independent. They need external help to articulate their thoughts, needs, and demands. They are too emotional to compose anything coherent. It cannot be the same drunk girl who was found unconscious, the one who the media said uncontrollably sobbed throughout testimony. On a deep level, they wanted to take away my writing, which I would not give up so easily.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir