“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won’t do harm – yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.” (Photo: Archive)
“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, “Oh, nothing!” Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts— not to hurt others.” (Photo: Archive)
“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.” (Photo: Archive)
“Why can’t people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing.” (Photo: Archive)
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” (Photo: Archive)
“There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.” (Photo: Archive)
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” (Photo: Archive)
“Terror made me cruel” (Photo: Archive)
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” (Photo: Archive)
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” (Photo: Archive)
“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.” (Photo: Archive)
“It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.” (Photo: Archive)
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” (Photo: Archive)
“It’s much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.” (Photo: Archive)
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” (Photo: Archive)
“Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You’re in with the former, but my God I don’t envy the blood on your conscience.” (Photo: Archive)
“Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” (Photo: Archive)
“It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason.” (Photo: Archive)
“We need never be ashamed of our tears.” (Photo: Archive)
“We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.” (Photo: Archive)
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” (Photo: Archive)
“And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.” (Photo: Archive)
“I know. I was there. I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.” (Photo: Archive)
“No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying.” (Photo: Archive)
“She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.” (Photo: Archive)
“It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.” (Photo: Archive)
“Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.” (Photo: Archive)
“Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” (Photo: Archive)
“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.” (Photo: Archive)
“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” (Photo: Archive)
“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.” (Photo: Archive)
“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.” (Photo: Archive)
“You are your best thing” (Photo: Archive)
“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.” (Photo: Archive)
“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” (Photo: Archive)
Check out this list of iconic and memorable quotes from some of the great literary works. Have you read all of them yet? Get going!
