Jackie > Jackie's Quotes

“The demons of the Devil don't use your weak weaknesses against you, they use your strong ones. If you're rational and logical, they argue their case rationally and logically. If you're loyal and faithful, they turn those against you. If you're passionate and emotional, they make you passionate and emotional about your worse fears. Your weak weaknesses are no use to them.... They find the strongest weaknesses you didn't know were yours and use those against you.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

“Belief means willing yourself to give all your attention to living with loving gladness in the world you think really exists.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

“If a boy, if a man, asks you if you're all right and you say yes, he'll always believe you and get on with what he wants to do. It's just the way they're made.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

“We resent being faced with facts we'd prefer to ignore as much as being wrongly accused of doing something we haven't.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

“Yet, isn't it strange, isn't it weird, how we can KNOW that someone is not behaving in the way we imagine, and at the same time we can be totally convinced that he is! How clever the human mind is, that it can accept two contradictory things as 'facts.' Yes, I know that in this case one 'fact' was untrue. But the human mind can KNOW something is untrue and still accept it as a 'fact,' and act on it as if it were true.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

“There are times when you don't know yourself. There are times when you don't want to know yourself. There are times when you want to be what you have never allowed yourself to be before.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

“Books are essential to me. I cannot live without them, because I cannot live without reading.

But, Arry has just said to me, you can always borrow them so why buy them?

I don't buy books just to collect them. I'm not a collector. I'm not interested in them as objects that might be valuable one day, regardless of what they are about, nor do I want to own every book ever written by one particular author or on one particular subject. I buy them because I want to read them, and I keep them because I've read them.

I can't afford to buy all the ones I'd like to, so I have to borrow quite a few, and this has taught me something about myself, which I haven't heard anyone else admit. When I've read a book which I really like, a book which MATTERS, I feel it belongs to me. I mean, the book itself, the copy I've read. It's as if I pour myself onto the pages as I read them, all my thoughts and emotions, so that by the time I've finished that copy holds inside it the essence of my reading.

A borrowed book has to be returned, so I lose this essence of myself when I give it back. Besides which, a borrowed book has inside it something of everyone else who's read it. They've fingered it and pawed over it, breathed on it, done heaven knows what else as well as read it. And knowing this spoils my reading. The other readers get in my way. I can feel their presence on the cover and on the pages. They even make it smell differently from my own books. In fact, to my mind they've polluted the book and everything in it. That is also why I never buy second-hand books.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

“And if I get a little chemically imbalanced in the head, like we all know I tend to get sometimes, and I don't want my parents or brother knowing, Will's like, 'We'll deal with it.' He's never said, 'I'll fix it up.' He just says, 'You're not up to going back to uni to finish your Honours this year? Big deal. There's next year. We'll deal with it.'" She nods. "That's what he does well.”
― Melina Marchetta, The Piper's Son

“But then she often felt like this lately. The world seemed full of transparent frauds that only she could see through. She was forever shouting from the hustings of honesty, though if any honesty were directed at her she ran from it horrified. And she knew it, laughed at herself for it, wretchedly. She was all to pieces.”
― Jude Morgan, Passion: A Novel of the Romantic Poets

“What did she love Shelley for? His reckless spontaneity -- like this. His helpless generous nature -- like this. His treatment of her as a reasonable human being and not a trembling little rose -- and so on. If she loved him for these things, could she hate him for them? Could she?”
― Jude Morgan, Passion: A Novel of the Romantic Poets

“This is a—a proposal of marriage?” he asked me, and there was the very smallest trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth, something I had never seen before.
“I suppose so,” I said, blushing again. “And, as you see, I’m doing it properly, on my knees.”
“This would, however, be a partnership of equals you’re offering, I imagine?”
“Undoubtedly.” (448-49)”
― Juliet Marillier, Son of the Shadows