Joy Nicholas > Joy's Quotes

“Homo homini monstrum”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“Unable to rid myself of it, since I heard your song humming ever in my head, beheld your feet dancing always on my breviary, felt even at night, in my dreams, your form in contact wih my own, I desired to see you again, to touch you, to know who you were, to see whether I should really find you like the ideal image which I had retained of you, to shatter my dream, perchance with reality. At all events, I hoped that a new impression would efface the first, and the first had become insupportable. I sought you. I saw you once more. Calamity! When I had seen you twice, I wanted to see you a thousand times, I wanted to see you always. Then - how stop myself on that slope of hell? - then I no longer belonged to myself.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“For dogs we kings should have lions, and for cats, tigers. The great benefits a crown.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“Djali trotted along behind them, so overjoyed at seeing Gringoire again that she constantly made him stumble by affectionately putting her horns between his legs. 'That's life,' said the philosopher, each time he narrowly escaped falling flat on his face. 'It's often our best friends who cause our downfall.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“When one does wrong, one must do it thoroughly.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

“Time is greedy, man is greedier”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“Why, there's the air, the sky, the morning, the evening, moonlight, my friends, women, the beautiful architecture of Paris to study, three big books to write and all sorts of other things. Anaxagoras used to say that he was in the world in order to admire the sun. And then I have the good fortune to be able to spend my days from morning to night in the company of a man of genius - myself - and it's very pleasant.”
― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

“Life is a bucket of shit with a barbed wire handle.”
― Jim Thompson

“Was he an animal if music could captivate him so? It seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the unknown nourishment he had been yearning for.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“He slid back into his previous position.
'Getting up so early,' he thought, 'makes one entirely stupid. People must have their sleep.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“Writing, when it springs from within, is like giving birth, and the child is covered in mucus”
― Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis

“You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

“Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“Love was not something to be felt, not a particular emotion, nor yet a particular shade of feeling, it was much more like a lowering curse on the horizon, a precursor of disaster.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

“I have found God, but he is insufficient.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. ”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it’s painful gall-stones, it’s gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul...”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“You must be life for me to the very end," so he writes. "That is the only way in which to sustain my idea of you. Because you have gotten, as you see, tied up with something so vital to me, I do not think I shall ever shake you off. Nor do I wish to. I want you to live more vitally every day, as I am dead. That is why, when I speak of you to others, I am just a bit ashamed. It's hard to talk of one's self so intimately”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“...the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured- disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui- in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Well, I'll take these pages and move on. Things are happening elsewhere. Things are always happening. It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“I am a free man―and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me! Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to God alone―if He existed!”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. ”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie. The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If a am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer