Quotes About Life

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality.

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for all the things he did.

Y para eso escribo, escribo, escribo, al mediodía o a las tres de la madrugada. Para no estar muerto.

Le cose che si sono viste una volta non possono morire, semplicemente non possono. Da qualche parte, nelle celle gocciolanti di cera di un alveare o nelle trentamile lenticole che ornano la testa di una falena, tutti i colori e le cose viste in un dato anno dovevano potersi ritrovare

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all. Secondly, writing is survival.

Not to write, for many of us, is to die.

The sun burned every day. It burned Time.

She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl's better off dead.

Whenever a light blinked out, life threw another switch; rooms were illumined afresh.

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for all the things he did. I was crying because he would never do them again...

Oh, el realismo!¡Oh, el aquí, oh, el ahora, oh, el infierno!

Quando morì, io mi accorsi ad un tratto che non piangevo per lui, ma per tutte le cose che aveva fatto.

Death loves death, not life. Dying people love to know that others die with them. It is a comfort to learn you are not alone in the kiln, in the grave.

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail, fresh detail.

I woke this morning and said to myself, 'Charlie, this is swell, living. Keep doing it!

It's a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead...

Este libro tiene poros, tiene rasgos. Este libro puede colocarse bajo el microscopio. A través de la lente, encontraría vida, huellas del pasado en infinita profusión. Cuantos más poros, más detalles provenientes de la vida misma haya en cada centímetro cuadrado de papel, más literaria será la obra.

La probabilidad de que se forme la vida a partir de la materia inanimada es una en 1040.000... Es lo suficientemente grande como para sepultar a Darwin y toda la teoría de la evolución. No hubo un caldo primigenio, ni en este planeta ni en ningún otro, y si los inicios de la vida no fueron al azar, debieron haber sido el producto de la inteligencia con propósito". Sir Fred Hoyle, profesor de astronomía de la Universidad de Cambridge.

If you want to change your life - right now - there is nothing more powerful than changing what you believe!

Hancock: I was talking about Olive, my sweetheart. Sid : And a load of old rubbish it was too. Hancock: Oh well of course, I wouldn't expect you to understand. How could a man like you hope to understand the sensitive world of two children who discover the wonders of innocent love for the first time. Sid: 'Innocent love'. If I'd been your old man I'd have given you a thump round the earhole and kicked you up to bed. Hancock: I don't think I've such a crude man in my life.

I don't think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.

I tell you, mythology I think of as the homeland of the Muses, the inspirers of poetry. And to see life as a poem, and yourself participating in a poem, is what the myth does for you.

But there is a fourth function of myth, and this is the one that I think everyone must try today to relate to—and that is the pedagogical function, of how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances. Myths can teach you that. MOYERS: So the old story, so long known and transmitted through the generations, isn't functioning, and we have not yet learned a new one?

That's the man who never followed his bliss. You may have a success in life, but then just think of it - what kind of life was it? What good was it - you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want tot go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off. p147