Iria > Iria's Quotes

“Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“They say nothing lasts forever but they're just scared it will last longer than they can love it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Wasn’t friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely?”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“None of them really wanted to listen to someone else’s story anyway; they only wanted to tell their own.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.”
― Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Leo Tolstoy , Anna Karenina

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It was the mark of a barbarian to destroy something one could not understand.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“Now I'm a scientific expert; that means I know nothing about absolutely everything.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“The time was fast approaching when Earth, like all mothers, must say farewell to her children.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go. I should experiment with drugs.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“I was a very autonomous and independent person with an inner life that nobody else had ever touched or perceived.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends