Elizabeth > Elizabeth's Quotes

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“[Harry] had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.”
― Charles Bukowski

“The story is always better than your ability to write it.”
― Robin McKinley

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”
― Anne Frank

“You intolerable lunatic," he snarled at me, and then he caught my face between his hands and kissed me.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”
― Langston Hughes

“And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

“And if my choice is to sit graciously in my best robes and accept the inevitable or to bail a sea with a bucket, give me the bucket.”
― Robin McKinley, Chalice

“I don't put up with being messed around, and I don't suffer fools gladly. The short version of that is that I'm a bitch. Trust me, I can provide character references.”
― Robin McKinley, Sunshine

“The great thing about fantasy is that you can drag dreams and longings and hopes and fears and strivings out of your subconscious and call them 'magic' or 'dragons' or 'faeries' and get to know them better. But then I write the stuff. Obviously I'm prejudiced.”
― Robin McKinley

“Sad and mad and love are such weak words, drawn long ago from Germanic languages spoken by people who may have been more stone than flesh. The soul needs words rooted in romance languages, words like despondent and ravished and adore.”
― Erin Bartels, The Words Between Us

“I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?”
― Robin McKinley, Sunshine

“At least I was true. My intellectual abilities gave me a release, and an excuse. I shunned company because I preferred books; and the dreams I confided to my father were of becoming a scholar in good earnest, and going to University. It was unheard-of several shocked governesses were only too quick to tell me, when I spoke a little too boldly -- but my father nodded and smiled and said, 'We'll see.' Since I believed my father could do anything -- except of course make me pretty -- I worked and studied with passionate dedication, lived in hope, and avoided society and mirrors.”
― Robin McKinley, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

“My books happen. They tend to blast in from nowhere, seize me by the throat, and howl 'Write me! Write me now!' But they rarely stand still long enough for me to see what and who they are, before they hurtle away again. And so I spend a lot of time running after them, like a thrown rider after an escaped horse, saying 'Wait for me! Wait for me!' and waving my notebook in the air.”
― Robin McKinley

“I don't love him. But I take a treacherous delight in him.”
― Rosamund Hodge, Gilded Ashes

“Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strengths.”
― C. H. Spurgeon

“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“A moment of peace, a moment without doubt, a moment I felt that, were I called to, I could walk on water, I could hold back the wind.”
― Erin Bartels, The Words Between Us

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“This is why it is sometimes hard for introverts to find words: we really hate to compromise, and words are always a compromise.”
― Laurie Helgoe, Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”
― E.E. Cummings

“Cynics are simply thwarted romantics.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss