Bell Hooks Quotes

Every nation thinks its own madness normal and requisite; more passion and more fancy it calls folly, less it calls imbecility.

A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars.

Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that's what I like about you most. Your anger.

Passion is passion. It's a sort of madness and possession of what you do or what you think. This is the difference of life: passion and commerce, which most of the people know as "P.C." But people have just got "C" now instead of "P."

A real flame of love is a subtle thing. It burns as a will-o'-the-wisp, dancing onward to fairy lands of delight. It roars as a furnace. Too often jealousy is the quality upon which it feeds.

Passion, intellect, moral activity - these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation.

She touched my hand what a chill I got, her lips are like a volcano that's hot.

There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

I wonder whether my bleak-o-meter is set differently from other people's. I have such passion for what I do that I can't see it as bleak. When people use that word, or “grim” or “gritty,” I just think, “Oh, come on, look a bit deeper.” My films don't give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they've really been through something.

I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again.

When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.

I think that passion if really intense is always destructive if not to the two involved, always to other people.

Such excess of passion is quite out of fashion

Love isn't sensible, Red. I think that's the point.

So, "normal" is really what society dictates as normal and if we're born in that world, we would see that as normal. But if you think about it for a second, is it really?

I would like to continue acting. I tell people I can't go back to real life. I have to see how far I can go with it. I am serious about it, and I believe that it's my calling. I think it's what my life's path is. It's what God has given me. It's what I was born to do. And so I must do it.

What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.

I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me.

Vehemence without feeling is but rant.

I like to be wild in passion and calculated in expression! I'm both. I like to be wild in passion more. But I think the balance is what's essential.

For me the music is not so much anger as much as it is of passion. And I've always associated that kind of intense emotional output with music just because the nature of the music that's attracted me as far as live.

People with eating disorders tend to be very diametrical thinkers – everything is the end of the world, everything rides on this one thing, and everyone tells you you're very dramatic, very intense, and they see it as an affectation, but it´s actually just how you think. It really seems to you that the sky will fall if you are not personally holding it up. On the one hand, this is sheer arrogance; on the other hand, this is a very real fear. And it isn't that you ignore the potential repercussions of your actions. You don't think there are any. Because you are not even there.

I think you can only be truly mad at someone you really love.

She tried to explain the real state of the case to her sister. "I do not attempt to deny," said she, "that I think very highly of him--that I greatly esteem, that I like him." Marianne here burst with forth with indignation: "Esteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Elinor. Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment." Elinor could not help laughing. "Excuse me," said she, "and be assured that I meant no offence to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my own feelings.

I think it's real important to enjoy what you do, have fun with it and not to put the pressure on yourself of everyone watching.