Best 24 quotes in «white oleander quotes» category

It was all I ever really wanted, that revelation. The possibility of fixed stars.

It wasn't like America, where we scraped the earth clean, thinking we could start again every time. We hadn't learned yet, there was not such thing as an empty canvas.

I was graduating in two months, but I wasn't to Pitzer, that was for sure. I was the old child, the past that had to burned away, so my mother, the phoenix, could emerge once again, a golden bird rising from the ash.

Rena noticed me watching it pass. 'You think they don't got problem?' Rena said. 'Everybody got problem. You got me, they got insurance, house payment, Preparation H.' She smiled, baring the part between her two upper teeth. 'We are the free birds. They want to be us.

Never let a man stay the night,” she told me. “Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.

My words, that's what she wanted. What's this? she kept asking. What's this? But how could I tell her? She'd taken all the words.

Nu înțelesesem atunci. Dacă păcătoșii erau așa de nefericiți, de ce preferau suferința? Dar acum știam de ce. Fără rănile mele, cine aș fi fost? Cicatricile mele erau fața mea, trecutul era viața mea. Nu că n-aș fi știut unde se putea ajunge cu aceste amintiri, cu toată setea aceea de frumusețe, de cruzime și de dezamăgire necontenită. (...) mai știam ceva. Că toți cei care nu recunoșteau cine erau sau unde fuseseră se aflau în cel mai mare pericol. Erau niște somnambuli orbi pe frânghie, care tăiau cu degetele aerul subțire. Așa că i-am lăsat să plece, m-am ridica și m-am îndepărtat, știind că am renunțat la ceva ce nu aveam să mai capăt vreodată.

Reverend Thomas said that in hell, the sinners were indifferent to the suffering of others, it was part of damnation. I hadn't understood that until now.

Talk to me. Look up, I thought. But she didn't, only stopped and picked a sprig of alyssum to smell the honey. I cut a shred from my heart and dangled it on a homemade hook before her.

The people who denied who they were or where they had been were in the greatest danger. They were blind sleepwalkers on tightropes, fingers scoring thin air.

What’s real is always worth it,' she explained to me. 'Look how it’s made.' She showed me the shoulders, the way they were knit together with a separate yoke instead of a seam. 'You’ll wear it your whole life.

We tried not to be in the same room at the same time when Starr was home, we set the air on fire between us.

The question of good and the nature of evil will always be one of philosophy’s most intriguing problems, up there with the problem of existence itself. If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one’s own universe, to live on one’s own terms, then every artist, thinker, every original mind, is evil. Because we dare to look through our own eyes rather than mouth clichés lent us from the so-called Fathers. To dare to see is to steal fire from the Gods. This is mankind’s destiny, the engine which fuels us as a race.

Who am I? I am who I say I am and tomorrow someone else entirely. You are too nostalgic, you want memory to secure you, console you. The past is a bore. What matters is only oneself and what one creates from what one has learned. Imagination uses what it needs and discards the rest— where you want to erect a museum. Don't hoard the past, Astrid. Don't cherish anything. Burn it. The artist is the phoenix who burns to emerge.

Women always put men first. That's how everything go so screwed up.

You never thought, maybe I should have left Astrid some words.

How easy I was. Like a limpet I attached myself to anything, anyone who showed me the least attention.

Don’t attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you’re lonely. Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. And intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way. (Book AND movie combination.)

...and I thought, there was no God, there was only what you wanted.

Dincolo de toate temerile, avertizările, Dincolo de toate, Greșelile unei femei sunt diferite de cele ale unei fete, Sunt scrise cu foc în piatră, Sunt o trăsătură, nu o eroare.

Don’t attach yourself to anyone who shows you the least bit of attention because you’re lonely. Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way. (movie & novel combination)

If I were a poet, that’s what I’d write about. People who worked in the middle of the night. They knew how long the night was. They knew the sound life made as it left. It rattled, like a slamming screen door in the wind. Night workers lives without illusions, they wiped dreams off counters, they loaded freight. They headed back to the airport for one last fare.

I liked the shifting colors of groups on the courtyard, but could not distinguish one student from the next. They were too young and undamaged, sure of themselves. To them, pain was a country they had heard of, maybe watched on a show about on TV, but one whose stamp had not yet been made in their passports. Where could I find a place where my world connected to theirs?

I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.