wallflower’s most recent Quotables

The relationship of a girl and her favorite novel can be complex indeed.

She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.

You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others.

Go without a coat when it's cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it's all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you're really made of and what you're capable of. If you're never tested, you'll never define your character.

Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowded room with boring people than I feel on my own.

Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.

Does he drive you wild or just mildly free?

I'm not sure who I am but I know who I've been.

It doesn’t matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.

In my experience, whatever happens clings to us like barnacles on the hull of a ship, slowing us slightly, both uglifying and giving us texture. You can scrape all you want, you can, if you have money, hire someone else to scrape, but the barnacles will come back or at least leave a blemish on the steel.

Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

And remember also that in fighting Man, we must not come to resemble him.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.

I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understanding must be part of the holding.