Lorraine > Lorraine's Quotes

“I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Solitary Summer

“Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Solitary Summer

“But it is impossible, I find, to tidy books without ending by sitting on the floor in the middle of a great untidiness and reading.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, In the Mountains

“What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Solitary Summer

“This radiant weather, when mere living is a joy, and sitting still over the fire out of the question, has been going on for more than a week.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, Elizabeth and Her German Garden

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“It is all very well to say that all princesses are good and beautiful and charming; but this is usually a determined optimism on everybody's part rather than the truth. After all, if a girl is a princess, she is undeniably a princess, and the best must be made of it; and how much pleasanter it would be if she were good and beautiful. There's always hope that if enough people believe as though she is, a little of it will rub off.”
― Robin McKinley, The Door in the Hedge

“Adult librarians are like lazy bakers: their patrons want a jelly doughnut, so they give them a jelly doughnut. Children’s librarians are ambitious bakers: 'You like the jelly doughnut? I’ll get you a jelly doughnut. But you should try my cruller, too. My cruller is gonna blow your mind, kid.”
― John Green

“People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered to be able to answer, such as "Is this the laundry?" "How do you spell surreptitious?" and, on a regular basis, "Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch," Carrot drew himself up proudly, "because someone's taken a book? You think that's worse than murder?"
The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like "What's so bad about genocide?”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“As long as you always see the next step, you can walk the whole way.”
― James S.A. Corey, Babylon's Ashes

“Humanity had come as far as it had in a haze of war, sickness, violence, and genocide. History was drenched in blood. But it also had cooperation and kindness, generosity, intermarriage.”
― James S.A. Corey, Babylon's Ashes

“I am a human being. Anything that happens to human beings could happen to me.”
― James S.A. Corey, Persepolis Rising

“There were so many variations of victory and loss.”
― James S.A. Corey, Persepolis Rising

“is foolish to run the risk of going mad for vanity’s sake.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“It is foolish to run the risk of going mad for vanity’s sake.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Drink chamomile tea to calm the spirit. Feed a cold and starve a fever. Read as many books as you can. Always choose courage. Never watch another woman burn. Know that love is the only answer.”
― Alice Hoffman, Magic Lessons

“Some stories begin at the beginning and others begin at the end, but all the best stories begin in a library.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Book of Magic

“A text—a book—is a resting place for the memories of people who have lived before. A way for the memory to stay fixed after the soul has traveled on.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Who can you trust if not your sister? Who knows your story better than she?”
― Alice Hoffman, Magic Lessons

“When people speak of traveling to the past, they worry about radically changing the present by doing something small, but barely anyone in the present thinks they can radically change the future by doing something small.”
― Barbara R. Nelson

“People value shiny stones and lucky charms, but they forget that the most powerful talismans of all are the stories that we tell to ourselves and to others.”
― Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

“Seems to me,” he said, “that this thing believes what it’s told, right?” “Well, it’s true that Hex has, if you want to put it that way, no idea of an untruth.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather