Christina > Christina's Quotes

“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”
― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Christopher Roden; Tsukasa Kobayashi; Akane Higashiyama; Hiroshi Takata

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four

“Go and see whether the Doctor is about,’ said Jack, ‘and if he is, ask him to look in, when he has a moment.’
Which he is in the fish-market, turning over some old-fashioned lobsters. No. I tell a lie. That is him, falling down the companion-way and cursing in foreign.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Blue at the Mizzen

“If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it.”
― H.G. Wells

“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.”
― Edward Gibbon

“The cork was in the bottle. He and the Atropos were trapped.”
― C.S. Forester, Hornblower and the Atropos

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“Hornblower worked as hard to conceal his human weaknesses as some men worked to conceal ignoble birth.”
― C.S. Forester, Lieutenant Hornblower

“A cup of tea would restore my normality."

[Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Screenplay]”
― Douglas Adams

“I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

“I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Leaves turned to soil beneath my feet. Thus it is, trees eat themselves.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
― John Locke

“...irresponsibility was something which, in the very nature of things, could not co-exist with independence.”
― C.S. Forester, Commodore Hornblower

“Bush put both arms round Hornblower’s shoulders and walked with dragging feet. It did not matter that his feet dragged and his legs would not function while he had this support; Hornblower was the best man in the world and Bush could announce it by singing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ while lurching along the alleyway.”
― C.S. Forester, Lieutenant Hornblower

“Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.”
― W.S. Merwin

“The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“It will do you no harm to find yourself ridiculous.
Resign yourself to be the fool you are...
...We must always take risks. That is our destiny...”
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

“We do not pass through the same door twice
Or return to the door through which we did not pass”
― T.S. Eliot

“Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“I already killed you once today, what does it take to teach some people?”
― Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere

“Time is what stops history happening at once; time is the speed at which the past disappears.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“You were used to say extremity was the trier of spirits; that common chances common men could bear; that when the sea was calm all boats alike showed mastership in floating”
― William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

“May I ask you something?" Dr Greysteel nodded."Are you not afraid that it will go out?"

"What will go out?" asked Dr Greysteel.

"The candle," Strange gestured to Dr Greysteel's forehead. "The candle inside your head.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“Like many spells with unusual names, the Unrobed Ladies was a great deal less exciting than it sounded.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell