Jen > Jen's Quotes

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
― James Baldwin

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.”
― Octavia E. Butler

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Elizabeth Appell

“Good things happen to those who hustle.”
― Chuck Noll

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
― Virginia Woolf

“I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. ”
― Virginia Woolf

“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
― James Baldwin

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
― James Baldwin

“Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.”
― James Baldwin

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ”
― James Baldwin

“We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Bingo Palace

“Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.”
― Agatha Christie, The Labours of Hercules

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
― Dr. Seuss, Happy Birthday to You!

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!

“If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it.”
― Sojourner Truth

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“When someone shows you who they are believe them the first time.”
― Maya Angelou

“I am a Woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
that's me.”
― Maya Angelou

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
― Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

“Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead.”
― Joss Whedon

“By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing.
And he vows his passion is,
Infinite, undying.
Lady make note of this --
One of you is lying.”
― Dorothy Parker

“What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.”
― Alexander Pope, Essay on Man and Other Poems

“Serving one's own passions is the greatest slavery.”
― Thomas Fuller