"I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned."
Harlan Ellison
#Harlan Ellison
#Lit
#Quotes
#Life
#Pain
#Pleasure
"Unexpected intrusions of beauty. That is what life is."
Saul Bellow
#quotes
#Saul Bellow
#Life
#Beauty lit
"The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one’s own — even more, one’s own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being."
Katherine Anne Porter
#quotes
#Katherine Anne Porter
#Beauty
#Life
#Lit
"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next."
Gilda Radner
#Gilda Radner
#Quotes
#Life
"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."
C.S. Lewis
#C.S. Lewis
#Lit
#Life
"Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder. Our attitudes and opinions change, we develop new habits and eccentricities; but that’s something different, more like decoration. Perhaps character resembles intelligence, except that character peaks a little later: between twenty and thirty, say. And after that, we’re just stuck with what we’ve got. We’re on our own. If so, that would explain a lot of lives, wouldn’t it? And also - if this isn’t too grand a word - our tragedy."
Julian Barnes
#Julian Barnes
#Writing Quotes
#Quotes
#Life
#Tragedy
#Lit
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
Stephen Levine
#Stephen Levine
#Quote
#Life
"The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you."
John E. Southard
#John E. Southard
#quotes
#fairness
#life
