Category: Quote

“Ode to Joy”

On By Christina's WordsIn Music, Quote5 Comments

“Ode to Joy” performed by Vallès Symphony Orchestra, the Lieder, Amics de l’Òpera and Coral Belles Arts choirs

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“Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

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“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, about future wife Zelda Sayre, in a letter to a friend, 1920

“Stories never really end … (Funke, Kerouac, Rumi, and Greene)

On By Christina's WordsIn Quote3 Comments

“Stories never really end … even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don’t end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.” ~ Cornelia Funke, Inkspell

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“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” ~ Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

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“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? – it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” ~ Jack Kerouac, On the Road

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“Rise up nimbly and go on your strange journey to the ocean of meanings. Leave and don’t look away from the sun as you go, in whose light you’re sometimes crescent, sometimes full. … Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” ~ Rumi, The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

 

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies… (Bradbury)

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“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”

~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“These words will ultimately end up being the barest of reflections… (Levithan)

On By Christina's WordsIn Quote

“These words will ultimately end up being the barest of reflections, devoid of the sensations words cannot convey. Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.”

– David Levithan, The Lover’s Dictionary. NPR review and excerpt. 

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first… (Salinger)

On By Christina's WordsIn Quote

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

– J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye