“Reality had always been something of an unknown quantity to me.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Her albino hair illuminated my dreams, shining brighter than moonlight.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“My ideas were confused. In a peculiar way, the unreality of the outer world appeared to be an extension of my own disturbed state of mind.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Something in her demanded victimization and terror, so she corrupted my dreams, led me into dark places I had no wish to explore. It was no longer clear to me which of us was the victim. Perhaps we were victims of one another.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“What I saw had no solidity, it was all made of mist and nylon, with nothing behind.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Instead of my world, there would soon be only ice, snow, stillness, death; no more violence, no war, no victims; nothing but frozen silence, absence of life. The ultimate achievement of mankind would be, not just self-destruction, but the destruction of all life; the transformation of the living world into a dead planet.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“I had a curious feeling that I was living on several planes simultaneously; the overlapping of these planes was confusing.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“She herself did not seem quite real. She was pale and almost transparent, the victim I used for my own enjoyment in dreams.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“So many dreams are crowding upon me now that I can scarcely tell true from false: dreams like light imprisoned in bright mineral caves; hot, heavy dreams; ice-age dreams; dreams like machines in the head.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“She was trying to become invisible in the snow. Sudden terror had seized her: the thought of the man whose ice-blue eyes had a magnetic power which could deprive her of will and thrust her down into hallucination and horror. The fear she lived with, always near her, close behind the world's normal façade, had become concentrated on him. And there was another connected with him, they were in league together, or perhaps they were the same person.
Both of them persecuted her, she did not understand why. But she accepted the fact as she accepted all the things that happened to her, expecting to be ill-treated, to be made a victim, ultimately to be destroyed, either by unknown forces or by human beings. This fate seemed always to have been waiting for her, ever since time began. Only love might have saved her from it. But she had never looked for love. Her part was to suffer; that was known and accepted. Fatality brought resignation. It was no use fighting against her fate. She knew she had been beaten before the start.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Она жила в атмосфере, пропитанной страхом; если б когда-нибудь она познала доброе к себе отношение, все было бы иначе. Деревья, казалось, угрожали, таили злой умысел. Всю жизнь она воспринимала себя как приговоренную жертву, и вот лес стал злой силой, готовой ее истребить.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Нереальность внешнего мира казалась своеобразным продолжением моего собственного, пребывавшего в серьезном расстройстве сознания.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Я привык к ощущению приближающейся казни. Но до сих пор это было нечто отдаленное, с чем я постепенно сживался. А тут вдруг это ощущение набросилось на меня, схватило за локоть, и это уже было не просто что-то отдаленное, а реальность, которая вот-вот наступит. Это потрясло меня, как удар под дых. Прошлое исчезло, стало ничем; в будущем — непостижимая пустота полного уничтожения. Единственное, что осталось — это беспрерывно сокращающийся отрезок времени именуемый «сейчас».”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
“Я подумал, что настоятельная потребность отыскать ее, словно она была утраченной частью меня самого, больше похоже не на любовь, а скорее на некое умопомрачение, слабость, которую необходимо изжить, вместо того чтобы позволять ей властвовать над собой.”
― Anna Kavan, quote from Ice
Anna Kavan
Born place: in Cannes, France
Born date April 10, 1901
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“What a beautiful world it was once. At least a river of it was.”
― Norman Maclean, quote from A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
“One touch of regret- not the canny substitute but the true regret from the heart- would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different institution.”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Passage to India
“I delete the picture of him from my phone; I delete his number. I think that if I just delete him enough, it will be like none of it ever happened and my heart won't hurt so badly”
― Jenny Han, quote from To All the Boys I've Loved Before
“Blay was the closest thing to an angel Qhuinn had ever come near.”
― J.R. Ward, quote from Lover Enshrined
“Fang felt a cold jolt, then dismissed it. Max wasn’t dead. He would know, somehow. He would have felt it. The world still felt the same to him; therefore, Max was still in it.”
― James Patterson, quote from Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
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On the Genealogy of...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
