Reader > Reader's Quotes

“Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African. All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I love mankind, he said, "but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“I am not well; I could have built the Pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

“Kill me, or you are a murderer.”
― Franz Kafka

“All I am is literature, and I am not able or willing to be anything else.”
― Franz Kafka

“I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.”
― Franz Kafka

“I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face”
― Franz Kafka

“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.”
― Franz Kafka

“Dear Milena,
I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.”
― Franz Kafka

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“I used to analyze myself down to the last thread, used to compare myself with others, recalled all the smallest glances, smiles and words of those to whom I’d tried to be frank, interpreted everything in a bad light, laughed viciously at my attempts ‘to be like the rest’ –and suddenly, in the midst of my laughing, I’d give way to sadness, fall into ludicrous despondency and once again start the whole process all over again – in short, I went round and round like a squirrel on a wheel.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

“A hundred suspicions don't make a proof.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“Cora didn't know what optimistic meant. She asked the other girls that night if they were familiar with the word. None of them had heard it before. She decided that it meant trying.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useless truth.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“The only way to know how long you are lost in the darkness is to be saved from it.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“Poems were too close to prayer, rousing regrettable passions. Waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you. Poetry and prayer put ideas in people's heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad

“Man has it all in his hands, and it all slips through his fingers from sheer cowardice.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.”
― Nabokov Vladimi, Lolita

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Words without experience are meaningless.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore