Matthew > Matthew's Quotes

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King

“Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
― Stephen King

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”
― Stephen King

“Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.”
― Stephen King

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“You should try not to talk so much, friend. You'll sound far less stupid that way.

- Breeze”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“It's easy to believe in something when you win all the time...The losses are what define a man's faith.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“Christianity nowadays is like a big household where many cousins live under the same roof. They all belong to the same clan, but at times they have very different ideas about how to run their family affairs.
Some of them, for instance, have no use for any outside devotion. God is a spirit, and He wants to be worshipped in spirit only, they say. Consequently, they have dispensed with all liturgy. They don’t want any distracting ceremonies, no incense, no vestments, no music, no pictures and images, not even sacraments—only the service of the spirit.
The trouble is, however, that as long as we live here on earth, we simply are not pure spirits, but we have also a body, and in that body, a very human heart; and this heart needs outward signs of its inward affections. That is why we embrace and kiss the one we love; and the more we love, the more ardently we press him to this very heart—somehow it seems as if these cousins had overlooked that fact. But you can’t cheat the heart; it knows what it wants, and it knows how to get it.”
― Maria Augusta Trapp

“It will be very interesting one day to follow the pattern of our life as it is spread out like a beautiful tapestry. As long as we live here we see only the reverse side of the weaving, and very often the pattern, with its threads running wildly, doesn't seem to make sense. Some day, however, we shall understand.
In looking back over the years we can discover how a red thread goes through the pattern of our life: the Will of God.”
― Maria von Trapp

“We are not poor. We just don't have any money!”
― Maria Augusta Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers

“What is the usual reaction among our friends and neighbors if in a family something unexpected happens?...Telephone and [email] are immediately put to work...and the incident is discussed for days on end. It is no wonder there is no time left in which to ponder on what it might mean, what message God might want to bring home to us by permitting this or that to happen in our lives...'To ponder' is an all-but-forgotten art in our days. Who thinks? We don't need to anymore. The TV and [internet] do it for us.”
― Maria von Trapp, Yesterday, Today, and Forever

“Loneliness, that fecker again, wreaking his havoc on us mortals. It's worse than any disease, gnawing away at our bones as we sleep, plaguing our minds when awake.”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“It’s an awful thing, to witness your mother cry. You cannot cure nor mend nor stick a plaster on.”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“Being understood without having to explain and not having to pretend all is fine. Being allowed to be a feckin’ mess. The feeling of his pat on my back as he passes behind me to go to the jax. Is it too much to ask for a simple resurrection?”
― Anne Griffin, When All Is Said

“The trouble with anger is, it gets hold of you. And then you aren't the master of yourself anymore. Anger is. And when anger is the boss, you get unintended consequences.”
― Jeanne Duprau, The City of Ember