Literary Quotes Archive

Nicola Barker

‘Trust me… if this bad family is vamoose, is go… All those tiny ticks, those habits, those faults which always irritates you before, or embarrassed you in front of your friends, once you’re gone - once they’re gone - then those same bad things - those maddening characteristics - become a kind of emotional glue which sticks them to your heart, to your soul, which makes them live and breathe inside of you, become an incredible part of you, so that soon what you thought you wanted or needed or craved suddenly seems almost… immaterial…’

- ‘Darkmans’

Nicola Barker

‘Isn’t it odd how the disapproval of others can often contribute so profoundly to one’s enjoyment of a thing?’

- ‘Darkmans’

Yann Martel

‘I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen every day. I will put in all the hard work necessary.’

- ‘Life of Pi’

Yann Martel

Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all that happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing. The sight beings on an oppressive sadness that no car about to hit you or water about to drown you can match. The feeling is truly unbearable.

- ‘Life of Pi’

D.H. Lawrence

An early cup of tea indoors when the sun actually shone? No thanks!

- ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’

D.H. Lawrence

‘Be braver in your heart, or you lose your game. Be braver in your body, or your luck will leave you.’

- ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’

D.H. Lawrence

That was her constant refrain to herself: Why is nothing important? Whether she was in church, or at a party of young people, or dancing in the hotel in the city, the same little babble of a question rose repeatedly on her consciousness: Why is nothing important?

- ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’

D.H. Lawrence

‘I’m perfectly alright today, and I shall be alright tomorrow. Why shouldn’t my future be continuous todays and tomorrows?’

- ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’

D.H. Lawrence

Six young rebels, they sat very perkily in the car as they swished though the mud. Yet they had a peaked look too. After all, they had nothing really to rebel against, any of them. They were left so free in their movements. Their parents let them do almost entirely as they liked. There wasn’t really a fetter to break, nor a prison bar to file through, nor a bolt to shatter. The keys of their lives were in their own hands. And there they dangled inert.

It is very much easier to shatter prison bars than to open undiscovered doors to life.

- ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’

D.H. Lawrence

‘Oh but I hate fellows who adore me! They bore me! They hang on like lead. Nothing puts me off like an adoring fellow. They bore me so! They make me feel beastly.’

- ‘The Virgin and the Gypsy’

Sylvia Plath

‘I don’t see what women see in other women,’ I told Doctor Nolan in my interview that noon. ‘What does a woman see in a woman that she can’t see in a man?’

Doctor Nolan paused. Then she said, ‘Tenderness.’

- ‘The Bell Jar’

Sylvia Plath

I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw that he would’t do at all.

That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a fourth of July rocket.

- ‘The Bell Jar’

Sylvia Plath

I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not.

- ‘The Bell Jar’

Sylvia Plath

The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.

- ‘The Bell Jar’

Sylvia Plath

There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.

- ‘The Bell Jar’