What makes something memorable? Is a movie great because of its special effects? Or is music great because of its sick drop in a beat? Are sports entirely about being physical? I beg to differ. You see, movies are great because of the writing, music is great because of its relatable words, and sports are about a unity, where people come together and chant the same memorable lines. I grew up collecting some of the best lines out there. Here are the top spine chilling quotes and poems out there, I hope they give you hope, make you laugh, make you cry, and make you think the way they make me do.
1. “so, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
never enough for both.” —Ijeoma Umebinyuo, “diaspora blues“
Foreign Mao (Mondrian) by Yu Youhan
2.“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.” ― Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"
3. "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... and one fine morning- so we beat on boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past." ―F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby"
4. "There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here!" — Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"
5. "Dark phrases of womanhood of never having been a girl, half-notes scattered without rhythm/no tune. Distraught laughter fallin over a black girl’s shoulder, it’s funny/it’s hysterical, the melody-less-ness of her dance. Don’t tell nobody, don’t tell a soul she’s dancin on beer cans & shingles. This must be the spook house another song with no singers, lyrics/no voices, & interrupted solos, unseen performances, are we ghouls?Children of horror? The joke? Don’t tell nobody don’t tell a soul, are we animals? Have we gone crazy? I can’t hear anythin but maddening screams & the soft strains of death & you promised me, you promised me… somebody/anybody sing a black girl’s song bring her out to know herself, to know you, but sing her rhythms, carin/struggle/hard times, sing her song of life. She’s been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn’t know the sound of her own voice, her infinite beauty. She’s half-notes scattered without rhythm/no tune, sing her sighs, sing the song of her possibilities, sing a righteous gospel, let her be born, let her be born, & handled warmly." ― Ntozake Shange, "Dark Phrases" from "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf"
Three Sisters by Keith Mallett
6. "The way I see it every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things but vice versa, the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant." ― Doctor Who, "Vincent and the Doctor"
7. “Because I know there are people who say all these things don’t happen. And there are people who forget what it’s like to be sixteen when they turn seventeen. I know these will all be stories some day, and our pictures will become old photographs. We all become somebody’s mom or dad. But right now, these moments are not stories. This is happening. I am here, and I am looking at her. And she is so beautiful. I can see it. This one moment when you know you’re not a sad story. You are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you’re listening to that song, and that drive with the people who you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear, we are infinite.”
― Stephen Chbosky, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"
8. Loki: So I am no more than another stolen relic, locked up here until you might have use of me?
Odin: Why do you twist my words?
Loki: You could have told me what I was from the beginning! Why didn't you?
Odin: You're my son... I wanted only to protect you from the truth...
Loki: What, because I... I... I am the monster parents tell their children about at night? ― Loki and Odon, Thor (2011)
9. “We were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth.” ― Toni Morrison, "The Bluest Eye"
Toni Morrison by Haydar Al-yasiry
10. "It's like you become more you but now it's okay, because the person chose to take all that on. All that weird stuff, whatever's wrong or bad or hiding in you. Suddenly, it's all right. You don't feel like such a freak anymore." — Suzanne, "Orange Is The New Black"
11. "... My Spanish is wondering when my parents will be American, asking me if I’m white yet. If you ask me if I am fluent in Spanish I will try to tell you the story of how my parents met in an ESL class. How it was when they trained their mouths to say, I love you in a different language, I hate you with their mouths shut. I will tell you how my father’s accent makes him sound like Zoro, how my mother tried to tie her tongue to a post with an English language leash, I will tell you that the tongue always ran stubbornly back to the language it had always been in love with. Even when she tried to tame it, it always turned loose. If you ask me if I am in fluent, I will tell you. My Spanish is understanding that there are stories that will always be out of my reach, there are people who will never fit together the way that I want them to, there are some letters that will always stay silent, there are some words that will always escape me."
— Melissa Lozada-Oliva, "You Know How To Say Arroz Con Pollo, But Not Who You Are"
Roots by Frida Kahlo
12. "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both...Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." ―Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken"
13. “Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.” ― J.D. Salinger, "The Catcher in the Rye"
The Face of War (Visage de la Guerre) by Salvador Dali
14. "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing's going to get better. It's not." ― Dr. Seuss, "The Lorax"
15. “I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.” ― Sylvia Plath, "The Bell Jar"
16. "Seems like each school has an arsenal of names getting updated every year, and if a kid breaks in a school and no one around chooses to hear do they make a sound? Are they just the background noise of a soundtrack stuck on repeat when people say things like kids can be cruel? Every school was a big top circus tent and the pecking order went from acrobats to lion tamers from clowns to carnies all of these were miles ahead of who we were, we were freaks..." ―Shane Koyczan, "To This Day"
