Quotes from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“Now why should that man have fainted? But he did,and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“It does not do to trust people too much.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very ' bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so:...”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, - to dress and entertain, and order things”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“John doesn't know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.
I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.
Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.
But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.
And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.
He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“The front pattern DOES move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“f a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do? . . .
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . .”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!
Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.
I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"
That silenced him for a few moments.
Then he said—very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!"
"I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!"
And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“It is getting to be a great effort for me
to think straight. Just this nervous weakness
I suppose.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“Por muito tempo fui incapaz de distinguir o que era aquela coisa em segundo plano, aquele subpadrão indistinto, mas agora estou bastante certa de que se trata de uma mulher.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

“He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, quote from The Yellow Wall-Paper

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Popular quotes

“Japan

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It’s the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it into the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.”
― Billy Collins, quote from Picnic, Lightning

“I see the whole episode in my memory as if it were a very crisply photographed black and white movie. Directed by Bergman perhaps.We are playing ourselves in the movie version. If only we could escape from always having to play ourselves !”
― Erica Jong, quote from Fear of Flying

“Toni, I barely know you, but I canna see anything remotely unworthy about you. any man would be blessed and honored to receive yer love." (Ian MacPhie)”
― Kerrelyn Sparks, quote from All I Want for Christmas is a Vampire

“How happy he must be, this Hobgoblin," exclaimed Sniff.
"He isn't a bit," replied Snufkin, "and he won't be until he finds the King's Ruby. It's almost as big as the black panther's head, and to look into it is like looking at leaping flames. The Hobgoblin has looked for the King's Ruby on all the planets including Neptune -- but he hasn't found it. Just now he has gone off to the moon to search in the craters, but he hasn't much hope of success, because in his heart of hearts the Hobgoblin believes that the King's Ruby lies in the sun, where he can never go because it is too hot.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Finn Family Moomintroll

“They met near the southern limit of the establishment grounds and for a while they spoke in an abbreviated and Aesopic language. They understood each other well, with many decades of communication behind them, and it was not necessary for them to involve themselves in all the elaboration's of human speech.

Daneel said in an all but unhearable whisper, "Clouds. Unseen."

Had Daneel been speaking for human ears, he would have said, "As you see, friend Giskard, the sky has clouded up. Had Madam Gladia waited her chance to see Solaria, she would not, in any case, have succeeded."

And Giskard's reply of "Predicted. Interview, rather," was the equivalent of "So much was predicted in the weather forecast, friend Daneel, and might have been used as an excuse to get Madam Gladia to bed early. It seemed to me to be more important, however, to meet the problem squarely and to persuade her to permit this interview I have already told you about.”
― Isaac Asimov, quote from Robots and Empire

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