Abby > Abby's Quotes

“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“But people need lift, too. People don't get moving, they don't soar, they don't achieve great heights, without something buoying them up.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage--as long as you edit brilliantly.”
― C. J. Cherryh

“Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“There is so much ignorant prejudice against bees in a dining-room.”
― Patrick o'brian, Post Captain

“I sit in front of the notebook and feel like it’s just too late for me. And that this book isn’t working, nothing’s working, everything feels like it’s made of spiders.”
― Jessica Abel, Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You’re Drowning in Your Daily Life

“...Gentlemen don't understand anything, however wise they may be.”
― Georgette Heyer, Venetia

“It's hard to overstate how deep the need can get for things to make sense.”
― John Darnielle

“Fear is the original sin. Almost all of the evil in the world has its origin in the fact that some one is afraid of something.It is a cold slimy serpent coiling about you. It is horrible to live with fear; and it is of all things degrading.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“He hadn't known her, didn't know her, of course. There wasn't the time.”
― Alexander Freed, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

“The Empire doesn’t care if you surrender. The Empire doesn’t care if you’re hopeless. I’ve given up before, and it doesn’t help. It doesn’t stop.”
― Alexander Freed, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“I doubt if I shall ever have time to read the book again -- there are too many new ones coming out all the time which I want to read. Yet an old book has something for me which no new book can ever have -- for at every reading the memories and atmosphere of other readings come back and I am reading old years as well as an old book.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Selected Journals Of L.M. Montgomery, Vol. 3: 1921-1929

“It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside-- but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond-- only a glimpse-- and heard a note of unearthly music.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

“Picture this: A bunch kids are drawing farm animals and having a blast. Then you see one kid who’s drawing the same lopsided house over and over again. He’s so depressed he’s almost crying. You ask him what’s wrong and he says, “I have to keep drawing these houses.” You ask him why, and he says, “My dad said there’s lots of money in real estate.”
― Emily Baker, Writing Motivation: Fighting Depression, How to be Happy, Overcome Writer’s Block, and Staying Motivated