“...a butterfly is like the soul of a person, it dries out in captivity.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“Everything is important. To the smallest insect, even the mouldering tree, the deepest stone in the drift.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“First smile!! An unseasonal little shower of rain fell here, and a lot of butterflies drowned, so we put them in the sun and they came back to life, and flew up and then Agaat SMILED!”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“Does a mirror preserve everything that has been reflected in it? Is there a record of light, thin membranes compressed layer upon layer that one has to ease apart with the finger-tips so that the colors don't dissipate, so that the moments don't blot and the hours don't run together into inconsequential splotches? So that a song of preserved years lies in your palm, a miniature of your life and times, with every detail meticulous in clear, chanting angel-fine enamel, as on the old manuscripts, at which you can peer through a magnifying glass and marvel at so much effort? So many tears for nothing? For light? For bygone moments?”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“In a state of pseudo-death you restore your substance.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“..did i think i was god that i had to lie and take it did i think then i was a mountain or a hill or a ridge and who told me that and who decided stones had no rights for stones can waste away from being denied from being abused and who decided who is the ploughed and who ploughs and why did i not get up and why not go away and what would have happened if i had resisted..”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“Well, I am something, Ma, you hissed, I am not nothing, I am somebody and I know what I want from life and I know what to do to get it. I will provide for myself.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“And I will close my eyes and prepare myself so that they can unscrew my head and allow the map to slip into my lacunae. So that I can be filled and braced from the inside and fortified for the voyage. Because without my world inside me I will contract and congeal, more even than I am now, without speech and without actions and without any purchase upon time.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“After all the years, after everything that you'd had to endure, after everything that you'd undertaken, however good or bad, long after you'd given up all hope, the reward.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“Nobody can be so beautiful from the outside and so hollow from inside. Not even in a third-rate novel.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“Marriage is holy and it's private.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“..we all have to do things in this life that we don't like..”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
Marlene van Niekerk
Born place: in Caledon, South Africa
Born date November 10, 1954
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“«Porque felizmente (pensaba) el hombre no está solo hecho de desesperación sino de fe y esperanza; no solo de muerte sino también de anhelo de vida; tampoco únicamente de soledad sino de momentos de comunión y amor. Porque si prevalece la desesperación, todos nos dejaríamos morir o nos mataríamos, y eso no es de ninguna manera lo que sucede. Lo que demostraba, a su juicio, la poca importancia de la razón, ya que no es razonable mantener esperanzas en este mundo en que vivimos. Nuestra razón, nuestra inteligencia, constantemente nos están probando que este mundo es atroz, motivo por el cual la razón es aniquiladora y conduce al escepticismo, al cinismo y finalmente a la aniquilación. Pero, por suerte, el hombre no es casi nunca un ser razonable, y por eso la esperanza renace una y otra vez en medio de las calamidades.»”
― Ernesto Sabato, quote from On Heroes and Tombs
“The path to accepting your sexuality has to start somewhere. For those identify as heterosexual, the childhood bliss of an early crush is typically encouraged and praised. Milestones such as your first date and the prom are celebrated by parents and friends.
But when you’re anything other than straight, it’s more complicated; your growth gets shrouded and stunted. That’s why a lot of queer people, when they fall in love and get into a relationship for the first time, revert to a kind of prepubescent puppy love: spontaneous, impulsive, obsessive, and ecstatic. I’ve heard many people express annoyance at friends who “just came out and it’s totally cool and whatever, but do they have to talk about it all the time?” My answer to that is “Yes. Yes, they do. Don’t you remember puppy love? Well, imagine if you had to hide it for twenty years. So yeah, if they wanna gush about it, let them gush. There’s a first time for everything.”
― Hannah Hart, quote from Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded
“There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life... it's The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that's not enough anymore.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slaughterhouse-five: The Children's Crusade, A Duty-dance with Death
“We should have just killed him, that's a lesson, don't get creative with revenge”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken
“He pauses. “Maybe that letter was left for you.”
“No, she was pretty pissed that I wrote back.”
Now he hesitates. “I don’t mean that she left the letter for you.”
It takes me a second to figure out his tone. “Rev, if you start preaching at me, I’m going in the house.”
“I’m not preaching.”
No, he’s not. Yet.
He still has that old Bible I found him clutching in my closet. It was his mother’s. He’s read it about twenty times. He’ll debate theology with anyone who’s interested—and I’m not on that list. Geoff and Kristin used to take him to church, but he said he didn’t like that he couldn’t live by his own interpretation.
What he didn’t say was that looking up at a man in a pulpit reminded him too much of his father.
Rev doesn’t walk around quoting Bible verses or anything—usually—but his faith is rock solid. I once asked him how he can believe in a providential god when he barely survived living with his father.
He looked at me and said, “Because I did survive.”
And there’s no arguing that.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Letters to the Lost
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