Jackie > Jackie's Quotes

“Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave, and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.”
― Alice Childress

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

“The truth is, honey, I've enjoyed my life. I've had a hell of a good time.”
― Ava Gardner

“Folks want to glow, to leave their worries and dead skin behind.”
― Terry McMillan, Getting to Happy

“Literature is humanity talking to itself.”
― Norman Rush

“You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“A map says to you.
Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not...
I am the earth in the palm of your hand.”
― Beryl Markham

“In a time of destruction, create something.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston

“The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.”
― Anne Perry, The Whitechapel Conspiracy

“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”
― Ivan Turgenev

“A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
― Sigmund Freud

“I think perhaps we want a more conscious life.”
― Sinclair Lewis

“That was one of the virtues of being a pessimist: nothing was ever as bad as you thought it would be.”
― James Jones, From Here to Eternity

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
― Emma Lazarus

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
― Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

“I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.”
― Stephen Greenblatt

“Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections

“I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Oh, please. Everyone in this town always says that, like you have to be born here to understand things. I understand plenty. You're only as weird as you want to be.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“The Waverley sisters hadn't been close as children, but they were as thick as thieves now, the way adult siblings often are, the moment they realize that family is actually a choice.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“On the day the tree bloomed in the fall, when its white apple blossoms fell and covered the ground like snow, it was tradition for the Waverleys to gather in the garden like survivors of some great catastrophe, hugging one another, laughing as they touched faces and arms, making sure they were all okay, grateful to have gotten through it.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Some of Bay's fondest memories were of lying under the apple tree in the summer while Claire gardened and the apple tree tossed apples at her like a dog trying to coax its owner into playing catch.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“The apple tree in the background, just barely visible, was stretching a single limb out to her, as if wanting to be in the photo with her.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Life seems sometimes like nothing more than a series of losses, from beginning to end. That's the given. How you respond to those losses, what you make of what's left, that's the part you have to make up as you go.”
― Katharine Weber, The Music Lesson

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

“Oh, Life, I am yours. Whatever it is you want of me, I am ready to give.”
― William Steig, Dominic