Jen > Jen's Quotes

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“No furniture is so charming as books.”
― Sydney Smith , A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith; 2 volume set

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“One ought not to judge her: all children are Heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb high trees and say shocking things and leap so very high grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless At All. September stood very generally in the middle on the day the Green Wind took her, Somewhat Heartless, and Somewhat Grown.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“There is a place, September, oh, very far from Pandemonium. A place where it is always autumn, where there is always cider and pumpkin pie, where leaves are always orange and fresh-cut wood is always burning and it is always, just always Halloween.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“Running was Clover's favorite thing to do, after reading. She loved the way the cement felt hard and unforgiving under her feet until she reached the park and the dirt path that wound its way alongside the Truckee River.

She liked the wind in her face and how it smelled like water. And the way Mango ran beside her, keeping her company. But most of all she liked the way the steady pace untangled her thoughts.”
― Shaunta Grimes, Viral Nation

“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“Maybe crazy is what they call anybody who's got magic in them after they're no longer a child.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.”
― Lemony Snicket

“This is not for you.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“I will hate the man you choose because he isn't me, and love him if he makes you smile.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“Everyday for Lucy's entire dog life Jane had sliced a banana for breakfast and had miraculously dropped one of the perfect disks on to the floor where it sat for an instant before being gobbled up. Every morning Lucy's prayers were answered, confirming her belief that God was old and clumsy and smelt like roses and lived in the kitchen.
But no more.
Lucy knew her God was dead. And she now knew the miracle wasn't the banana, it was the hand that offered the banana.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“No sabía entonces que el océano del tiempo tarde o temprano nos devuelve los recuerdos que enterramos en él.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Marina

“Todos tenemos un secreto encerrado bajo llave en el ático del alma. Éste es el mío.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Marina

“In her 1979 essay collection The Language of the Night, Ursula K. Le Guin paraphrases Tolkien: “If a soldier is captured by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?… If we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape and to take as many people with us as we can.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories

“Visualizing a happier, more just world is a direct assault on the forces that are trying to break your heart. As Le Guin says elsewhere, the most powerful thing you can do is imagine how things could be different … What if?”
― Charlie Jane Anders, Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories

“I've got kids that enjoy stealing. I've got kids that don't think about stealing one way or the other, and I've got kids that just tolerate stealing because they know they've got nothing else to do. But nobody--and I mean nobody--has ever been hungry for it like this boy. If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, Lamora would steal the needle and thread and die laughing. He...steals too much.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“I only steal because my dear old family needs the money to live!"
Locke Lamora made this proclamation with his wine glass held high; he and the other Gentleman Bastards were seated at the old witchwood table. . . . The others began to jeer.
"Liar!" they chorused
"I only steal because this wicked world won't let me work an honest trade!" Calo cried, hoisting his own glass.
"LIAR!"
"I only steal," said Jean, "because I've temporarily fallen in with bad company."
"LIAR!"
At last the ritual came to Bug; the boy raised his glass a bit shakily and yelled, "I only steal because it's heaps of fucking fun!"
"BASTARD!”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“Look, if you don't make a fool of yourself over animals, at least in private, you aren't to be trusted.”
― T. Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead

“Perhaps it was survival rather than victory, but sometimes just surviving was your definition of a win.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Shards of Earth

“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

“Is there anything better than iced coffee and a bookstore on a sunny day? I mean, aside from hot coffee and a bookstore on a rainy day.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Nora.” He just barely smiles. “You’re in books. Of course you don’t have a life. None of us do. There’s always something too good to read.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers