from-l_j literaryquotes



A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

Do you realize that all great literature- Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, A Farewell to Arms, The Scarlet Letter, The Red Badge of Courage, The Illiad, and The Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, The Bible, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade"- are all about what a bummer it is to be a human being?

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The Red Tent - Anita Diamant

'If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully.'

Passion comes from the Latin root, Pati.



It means to sufferVery soon he will vanish completely in the wings of his own wordless stanza..."



House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski









For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my excution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me without howls of execration.



- The Stranger, Albert Camus



dif.translations

With death so near, Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world had any right to weep for her. And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope , and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with shouts of hate."



"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlaying our hard hearts."

-Great Expectations by Charles Dickens



A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

"You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable of only good. And I see that clearly - that business about the marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain ... But the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man."

-A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.





KAVALEROV: You demand a sober approach to life. That's why I'm going to create something patently ridiculous, on purpose. I'll perpetrate a piece of brilliant mischief. On purpose. You want everything to be useful, but I want to be useless. (Pause). For example, I might just finish myself off. (Pause). Without any reason; out of mischievousness. To prove that I have the right to deal with myself any way I please. Namely, to commit a stupid suicide. And right at this very time when so many people are talking about clearness of purpose. Yes, hang myself. (Pause). I'll just hang myself right here in your doorway.

-Olesha, The Conspiracy of Feelings



Elie Wiesel - The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference"