Chantal > Chantal's Quotes

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“What are you going to do with your life?" In one way or another it seemed that people had been asking her this forever; teachers, her parents, friends at three in the morning, but the question had never seemed this pressing and still she was no nearer an answer... "Live each day as if it's your last', that was the conventional advice, but really, who had the energy for that? What if it rained or you felt a bit glandy? It just wasn't practical. Better by far to be good and courageous and bold and to make difference. Not change the world exactly, but the bit around you. Cherish your friends, stay true to your principles, live passionately and fully and well. Experience new things. Love and be loved, if you ever get the chance.”
― David Nicholls, One Day

“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

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

“If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.”
― Audrey Hepburn

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.”
― Albert Einstein

“Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn't roar?”
― Friedrich Schiller, Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua

“Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”
― William Faulkner

“The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory. Some things have been lost forever, other things will perhaps be remembered again, and still other things have been lost and found and lost again. There is no way to be sure of any this.”
― Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude

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

“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”
― Tennessee Williams, Conversations With Tennessee Williams

“The instant of a great disaster, it is often said, is an elongated one. As if in witnessing its own demise the human mind is want to wind the moment out long and long still.”
― Tiffany Baker, Mercy Snow

“Anatomists today would be hard put to identify the brain of a visual artist, a writer or a mathematician - but they would recognize the brain of a professional musician without moment's hesitation.”
― Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

“Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be.”
― T.S. Eliot

“To stand up for someone was to stitch your fate into the lining of theirs.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“There's nothing more stubborn than a fact. That is why you hate them so much. They offend you.”
― Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

“A promise unkept will take a man's mind.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“The heart's in it then, spinning dreams, and torment is on the way. The heart makes dreams seem like ideas.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.”
― William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

“If you tell somebody something, you've forever robbed them of the opportunity to discover it for themselves.”
― Curt Gabrielson, Tinkering: Kids Learn by Making Stuff

“The value of the student’s question is supreme. The best initial response to a question is not to answer it, per se, but to validate it, protect it, support it, and make a
space for it. Like a blossom just emerging, a question is vulnerable and delicate. A
direct answer can extinguish a question if you’re not careful. But if you nourish the
blossom, it will grow and give fruit in the form of insight as well as more questions.
In short, a question needs to be nurtured more than answered. It should be given
center stage, admired, relished, embraced, and sustained.”
― Curt Gabrielson, Tinkering: Kids Learn by Making Stuff

“Have you always been a swordsman?’ I asked.
He parried my overhead cut. ‘I’ve been many things.”
― Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth

“And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.”
― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars

“I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way. I do believe in fate and destiny, but I also believe we are only fated to do the things that we'd choose anyway. And I'd choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I'd find you and I'd choose you”
― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars

“I get that you're scared and that you've been hurt. But doing what is easy and safe is no way to live, and a life without passion and love is so far beneath what you deserve.”
― Kiersten White, The Chaos of Stars