Aisha Khan > Aisha's Quotes

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain

“The Seven Social Sins are:

Wealth without work.
Pleasure without conscience.
Knowledge without character.
Commerce without morality.
Science without humanity.
Worship without sacrifice.
Politics without principle.


From a sermon given by Frederick Lewis Donaldson in Westminster Abbey, London, on March 20, 1925.”
― Frederick Lewis Donaldson

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable.”
― Jess C. Scott, The Intern

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“But luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

“Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.”
― Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
― Anne Lamott

“A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I am not mad. I am eccentric perhaps--at least certain people say so; but as regards my profession. I am very much as one says, 'all there.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train

“Trains are relentless things, aren't they, Monsieur Poirot? People are murdered and die, but they go on just the same. I am talking nonsense, but you know what I mean."
"Yes, yes, I know. Life is like a train, Mademoiselle. It goes on. And it is a good thing that that is so."
"Why?"
"Because the train gets to its journey's end at last, and there is a proverb about that in your language, Mademoiselle."
"'Journey's end in lovers meeting.'" Lenox laughed. "That is not going to be true for me."
"Yes--yes, it is true. You are young, younger than you yourself know. Trust the train, Mademoiselle, for it is le bon Dieu who drives it."
The whistle of the engine came again.
"Trust the train, Mademoiselle," murmured Poirot again. "And trust Hercule Poirot. He knows.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train

“A man when he is making up to anybody can be cordial and gallant and full of little attentions and altogether charming. But when a man is really in love he can't help looking like a sheep.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mystery of the Blue Train

“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them. ”
― Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”
― Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

“An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her.”
― Agatha Christie

“The young people think the old people are fools -- but the old people know the young people are fools.”
― Agatha Christie, Murder at the Vicarage

“Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it.”
― Agatha Christie

“But no artist, I now realize, can be satisfied with art alone. There is a natural craving for recognition which cannot be gain-said.”
― Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

“I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”
― Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

“An appreciative listener is always stimulating.”
― Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles

“Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.

[Witness for the Prosecution, also published in The Hound of Death and Other Stories.]”
― Agatha Christie, The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories

“Why is it," he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?"
"Because I like you," she said, "and I don't want anything from you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I wonder how many times each day she dies a little.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I'm sorry, Gemma. But we can't live in the light all of the time. You have to take whatever light you can hold into the dark with you.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty