Eula Biss Quotes

But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far and superior to that of muscle and sinew. Let me tell you, if you don't know it from your own experience, that reading a good book, losing yourself in the interest of words and thoughts, is for some people (me, for instance) an incredible intensity of happiness.

And dare love that, and say so too, And forget the He and She.

Everything in me feels fluttering and free, like I could take off from the ground at any second. Music, I think, he makes me feel like music.

I think books were my salvation, they saved me from being miserable.

Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.

One of the things that made me long to be back in prison was that I had so little opportunity for reading, thinking and quiet reflection after my release. I intend, amongst other things, to give myself much more opportunity for such reading and reflection.

Sometimes it takes courage and experience to allow yourself to actually go into being someone that you're not, and it's the most liberating thing to let go. I do think that's why I love acting - it's being someone that you're not. And sometimes you're really scared of it, and then once you let yourself go there, it's the best thing ever.

Ten guards and the warden couldn't have torn me out of those books. Months passed without even thinking about being imprisoned....I had never been so truly free in my life.

Joy is a freedom. It helps a person to find his/her own liberation. The person who is joyous takes responsibility for the time he/she takes up and the space that he/she occupies. You share it! Some of you have it ... you share it! That is what joy is! When you continue to give it away you will still have so much more of it.

Oh, Mona, we're all damned fools! Some of us just have more fun with it than others. Loosen up, dear! Don't be so afraid to cry . . . or laugh, for that matter. Laugh all you want and cry all you want and whistle at pretty men in the street and to hell with anybody who thinks you're a damned fool!

A simple line painted with the brush can lead to freedom and happiness.

When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman.

Books bear him up a while, and make him try to swim with bladders of philosophy.

When we give way to joy, we do not feel that we have lost control, but gained freedom.

I'd rather put on a pair of jeans and get on my Harley and act like a guy.

The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.

I didn’t want to tell the story of myself, but someone I called myself. If you read yourself as fiction, it’s rather more liberating than reading yourself as fact.

Reading gives one something to think about other than one's self.

Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.

I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free.

I was a prisoner, but I always felt free because I was not frightened So for me real freedom is freedom from fear.

I am thrilled at most corners that I turn walking down the street, I'm thrilled by most pages I turn when I'm reading a book thinking of what it's going to show and what it's going to make possible for tomorrow.

The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

I've never considered myself cool, and I don't think I ever will be. Honestly, it's better that way. It's much less pressure.