“Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who’d be kind to me. That’s what people really want, if they’re telling the truth.”
— Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
If you were a nerdy bookish teen girl obsessed with Greek mythology, there’s a good chance Athena was your favourite goddess. She was certainly mine. Athena is the bright-eyed goddess of wisdom, handicrafts and war (strategic warfare rather than pure bloodlust). This quote comes from Aeschylus’ tragedy The Eumenides, where Athena represents the reason and modern rule of law as opposed to raw revenge.
As a graphic designer, I work on a computer all day long, but I do love this quote from the Westwood I Kawakubo fashion exhibition I saw a while ago.
“As you get older, you don’t get wiser. You get irritable.“
— Doris Lessing
“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.“
— Gustave Flaubert
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Is that vodka?” Margarita asked weakly.
The cat jumped up in his seat with indignation.
“I beg pardon, my queen,” he rasped, “Would I ever allow myself to offer vodka to a lady? This is pure alcohol!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
