Selene > Selene's Quotes

“I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“Poetry = Anger x Imagination”
― Sherman Alexie, One Stick Song

“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”
― Raymond Chandler, Long Goodbye

“It’s like there is this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds on the essence of the spirit.”
― John Trudell

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
― Arundhati Roy

“Where there is power, there is resistance.”
― Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction

“Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.”
― Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader

“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.”
― Augustine of Hippo

“The price an artist pays for doing what he wants is that he has to do it.”
― William S. Burroughs

“I am ready for whatever's coming. I expect nothing but to be let down or turned away. I am alone. Goddamn. The shit hurts sometimes, but I realize what I am, what I have become.”
― Henry Rollins

“I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.”
― Angela Carter

“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.”
― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

“Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there.”
― Vine Deloria Jr.

“The truth is, of course, that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.”
― David Bowie

“There were so many Pittsburgh poets in my hallway that if, at that instant, a meteorite had come smashing through my roof, there would never have been another stanza written about rusting fathers and impotent steelworkers and the Bessemer convertor of love.”
― Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys

“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are
presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new
evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is
extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it
is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize,
ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.”
― Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks

“You know, they say in France that translation is like a woman: she is either beautiful or faithful. ”
― Marjane Satrapi

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running