Memorable Quotations

Parties
"For a party makes things either much more real, or much less real."

Youth
"So desperate the young are nowadays, driving with their racing cars to revolution."

Beauty
"I always say anyone can smash a plate; but what I admire is old china, riveted."

Love
"A faint whiff of nausea hit me at seeing pain as proof of love, but it seemed true. Unavoidable."

Normalcy
"There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior and claim originality according to the fashionable
eccentricities of their time...Then there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull."

Truth
“The truth is always an insult or a joke. Lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone’s comfort.”

Danger
"Stupid people are dangerous."

Fear
“It's fear that makes us lose our conscience. It's also what transforms us into cowards.”

Books
"Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.”

Spite
"He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and malice.”

Books
“Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.”

New York
“It had never occurred to me before but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing as strange as the last, and connected.”

Struggle
“Everything was fabulous, even our breakdowns.”

War
"The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. ”

Power
“It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”

Change
“So this was what it felt like to lose yourself. Again. To let go of your future and let it rise up and up until finally you couldn't see it anymore, and you knew that you had to start over.”

Grief
“This was what real grief felt like—she had never truly felt it before. All the times she had been sad, all the times she had wept in her life, all the glooms and melancholies were merely moods, mere passing whims. Grief was a different thing altogether.”

Happiness
"And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”

Loneliness>/b>
“If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”