Ludmilla Quotes & Sayings

Part of the depressive syndrome is that you are immensely loyal to your interpretation of yourself and your world. If God says you are forgiven in Christ, you create new rules that mandate contrition, penance, and self-loathing. If God says he loves you, you insist it is impossible. There it is: your system is higher than God's. — Edward T. Welch

The main thing for a gymnast is total concentration while competing. At such moments one has to put everything else behind. I know that other gymnasts can do so with a smile, but I can't. And I don't even try to. — Ludmilla Tourischeva

You don't stay married for thirty-nine years because of sex or even because of love, but because your partner is a real friend to you, because they respect and regard you. — Olympia Dukakis

All one's feeling goes into practicing exercises, many of which are set to music. Therefore, somehow dancing with boyfriends doesn't attract me. — Ludmilla Tourischeva

The seventh reader interrupts you: "Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could only end in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and heroine married, or else they died. The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death."
You stop for a moment to reflect on these words. Then, in a flash, you decide you want to marry Ludmilla. — Italo Calvino

To control students is to force them to accommodate to a preestablished curriculum. — Alfie Kohn

Militias, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves and include all men capable of bearing arms. [ ... ] To preserve liberty it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them. — Richard Henry Lee

I've always been a big fan of time travel, and I'm very into the notion that some day we'll be able to do it. Beam me up! — Scott Bakula

It was in a dream, though, that it happened, and dreams don't count. — Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

It is always unconscionable for the government to punish people for expressing an idea merely because government officials - or the majority of citizens - decide that those ideas are 'dangerous' or 'wrong.' That is a power nobody ought to possess. — Glenn Greenwald

Parallel worlds, right?" Aston nodded. "Our sci-fi writers love 'em." "They still do back home," Ludmilla assured him. — David Weber

The piano - that, too, was an adventure. A little girl tried to learn to play it. Her mother insisted, forced her to sit there and practice. Nothing came of it; stubbornness won out in the end, the stubbornness that protects us from the will of others, that defends our right to live our life the way we want. Even if it means life will turn out worse than anyone planned, will turn into a poor life - but it'll be one's own, however it is, even without music, even without talent. — Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

But Ludmilla is always at least one step ahead of you. "I like to know that book exists that I will still be able to read ... " she says, sure that existent objects, concrete albeit unknown, must correspond to the strength of her desire. How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist? — Italo Calvino

All of us who serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate pay into Social Security. — Virgil Goode

Ludmilla, now you are being read. Your body is being subjected to a systematic reading, through channels of tactile information, visual, olfactory, and not without some intervention of the taste buds. Hearing also has its role, alert to your gasps and your trills. It is not only the body that is, in you, the object of raeding: the body matters insofar as it is part of a complex of elaborate elements, not all visible and not all present, but manifested in visible and present events: the clouding of your eyes, your laughing, the words you speak, your way of gathering and spreading your hair, your initiatives and your reticences, and all the signs that are on the frontier between you and usage and habits and memory and prehistory and fashion, all codes, all the poor alphabets by which one human being believes at certain moments that he is reading another human being. — Italo Calvino

I personally support the type of gymnastics which does not exceed a certain amount of acrobatics and risks because then one can still say: what a lovely sport gymnastics is. — Ludmilla Tourischeva

Having lost its value, money may no longer be the root of all evil; credit having taken its place. — Dalton Camp

Isn't it nice," the older lady said, leaning in so that only Penelope could hear her words, "to discover that we're not exactly what we thought we were?"
And then she walked away, leaving Penelope wondering if maybe she wasn't quite what she'd thought she was.
Maybe - just maybe - she was something a little bit more. — Julia Quinn

Dance is movement, and movement is life. — Ludmilla Chiriaeff

She keeps looking up, not meeting his eyes - the sign of a serious crush, by the way. — Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

None of us understand what we're doing, but we do beautiful things anyway. — Allen Ginsberg

What goes around, doesn't come around ... you make it come around. — Sabah Carrim

A lazy person never gets what he wants, but a hard-working man gets what he goes after. — Jack Blanco

On the night she died and they took her away, her husband collapsed, and in his sleep he heard her - she was there, and she lay her head down on the pillow next to him and said, "My love." And after that he slept happily, and at the funeral he was calm and dignified, though he'd lost a great deal of weight, and was honest and upright, and at the wake, when everyone had gathered at his apartment, he told them all that she had come to him and called him "My love." And everyone froze, because they knew what he said was true - and the photograph no longer hung over his desk. — Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

It was so popular, so more people identify me from 'Friends' than anything else. — Eddie Cahill

Old Milgrom pauses to console the girl and tells her she's not the only one who's clumsy, that she herself couldn't do anything when she was young - boil an egg or hem a diaper - and then she learned. Life taught her. — Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

It's no secret, of course, that souls sometimes die within a person and are replaced by others - especially with age. — Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

That's the funny thing," she said. "Men always want to die for something. For someone. I can see the appeal. You do it once and it's done. No more worrying, not knowing, about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I know you all think it sounds brave, but I'll tell you something even braver. To struggle and fight for the ones you love today. And then do it all over again the next day. Every day. For your whole life. It's not as romantic, I admit. But it takes a lot of courage to live for someone, too. — Victor LaValle

There was nothing but pain in store for her, yet she cried with happiness and couldn't stop. — Ludmilla Petrushevskaya