Silvia Macovei > Silvia's Quotes

“The past is only one of many possible futures. It wasn't the past you had to avoid and ignore, it was its ossification.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 2

“He was too simple to wonder when he had attained humility. But he knew he had attained it and he knew it was not disgraceful and it carried no loss of true pride.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour.”
― Elon Musk

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“And when the event, the big change in your life, is simply an insight—isn't that a strange thing? That absolutely nothing changes except that you see things differently and you're less fearful and less anxious and generally stronger as a result: isn't it amazing that a completely invisible thing in your head can feel realer than anything you've experienced before? You see things more clearly and you know that you're seeing them more clearly. And it comes to you that this is what it means to love life, this is all anybody who talks seriously about God is ever talking about. Moments like this.”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

“Everything that can be said with words can be contradicted with words, so what’s the point of dissertations, novels, literature? Or put another way: whatever we say is true we can also always say is untrue. It is a zero point and the place from which the zero value begins to spread. However, it is not a dead point, not for literature either, for literature is not just words, literature is what words evoke in the reader. It is this transcendence that validates literature, not the formal transcendence in itself, as many believe.”
― Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 2

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“But, of course, it isn't really Good-bye, because the Forest will always be there... and anybody who is Friendly with Bears can find it.”
― A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin

“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“A person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn't expect much from her reunions.”
― Milan Kundera, Ignorance

“Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.”
― Ovid

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“My library is an archive of longings.”
― Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

“If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Q: Where does Music come from?
A: The same place as Silence.
Q: Why aren’t Music and Silence the same, then?
A: They are. It’s just that Music is a little louder.”
― Robert Fripp

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”
― Zadie Smith

“Sometimes you meet someone, and it’s so clear that the two of you, on some level belong together. As lovers, or as friends, or as family, or as something entirely different. You just work, whether you understand one another or you’re in love or you’re partners in crime. You meet these people throughout your life, out of nowhere, under the strangest circumstances, and they help you feel alive. I don’t know if that makes me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheer blind luck, but it definitely makes me believe in something.”
― Oscar Auliq-Ice

“There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“I always advise people never to give advice.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“My grandfather looked at me, and after a bit of silence, he gently and calmly said, “Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”
― Jeff Bezos, Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos

“Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real.”
― Nora Ephron

“Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.”
― Nora Ephron