Quotes on Ifs

I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others -- The only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad.

Everything is the way it is because everything was the way it was. Sometimes I feel ensnared in this, as if no matter what I do, what will come has already been fixed.

If this is what you came for, then I didn't send for you. Kafka (note to himself in journal)

If a fear cannot be articulated, it can't be conquered.

I think a lot about the poems I wasn't able to write...I masturbrated...Solitude is essentially a matter of pride; you bury yourself in your own scent. The issue is the same for all real poets. If you've been happy for too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you've been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic power...Happiness and poverty can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterword either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness.

If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.

I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me.

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him.

If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.

If you want what's in the package you should at least know how to get the string off, is what I say.

But neither of us knows, because a fight's worth nothing if you know from the start that you're going to win it.

If you sweep a house, and tend its fires and fill its stove, and there is love in you all the years you are doing this, then you and that house are married, that house is yours.

The moth don't care when he sees the flame_x000D_ He might get burned, but he's in the game_x000D_ And once he's in, he can't go back_x000D_ He'll beat his wings till he burns them black_x000D_ No, the moth don't care when he sees the flame_x000D_ The moth don't care if the flame is real_x000D_ 'Cause flame and moth got a sweetheart deal_x000D_ And nothing fuels a good flirtation_x000D_ Like need and anger and desperation_x000D_ No, the moth don't care if the flame is real.

If someone betrays you once, it’s their fault; if they betray you twice, it’s your fault.

She gave 'The Dream Carrier' to Max as if words alone could nourish him.

thus, in a sense, we are all doomed. even if we stay away from black holes

Sooner or later... one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

Have to? Of course you have to! But only because of you, Harry, won't rest until Voldemort is finished! Think now, for once, if you have never heard of the prophecy! What would you do?

For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength and breath And the want Of thought is death Then am I A happy fly If I live Or if I die

"Is," "is," "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.

Nothing belongs more fully to an artist than his creation - even if you give him your youth, your money, your love, your courage, nothing belongs to you.