“What happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough? It becomes your entire history.”
– Louise Erdrich, The Plague of Doves
Category: Quote
“He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself …
“He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.”
— James Joyce, A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man. Penguin Classics, 1916
“Written over the gate here are the words …
“Written over the gate here are the words ‘Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.’ Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“I love your silence. It is so wise. It listens. …
“I love your silence. It is so wise. It listens. It invites warmth. I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you. You have the loneliness that all true heroes have, a loneliness that is a deep sea, within which the fishes of mystery dwell. I love your quest. It is noble. It has greatness in it. Only one who is born under a blessed star would set sail across the billowing waves and the wild squalls, because of a dream. I love your dream. It is magical. Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do. People like you enrich the dreams of the world, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are the unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love.”
– Ben Okri, Astonishing the Gods
“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. …
“I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
~ Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Words ... for the Time Being 