Emily > Emily's Quotes

“When you die, the last thing you want is for your death to leak out and infect those left behind, for those loved ones to become a kind of living dead. And yet, inevitably, that often happens. It has happened to me.

But I sense it is getting closer. Life. I sense it, just inches ahead of me.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“I would love Bono to hug me. I would love Bono to give me "the Bono talk" - the infamous speech where he takes hot young bewildered things to one side and counsels them, and vows to defend them, in the rock equivalent of Glinda's kiss upon the brow.

When you get the Bono talk, that means you're saved. I would love to be saved. I would love someone to empirically tell me what I should do. Having to guess - improvise - all the time is so wearying.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”
― D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Because I haven't yet learned the simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl

“There is a silence that comes to a house when no one can sleep. I guess it's the price of love; I know it's not cheap.”
― U2

“There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”
― Milan Kundera

“In another life I would have liked to be a poet, I just can’t stop the lines in time, so I’m a novelist.”
― Colum McCann

“Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.”
― Jane Austen

“Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!”
― Jane Austen

“I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way.”
― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“You must be the best judge of your own happiness.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected."

(Frauds on the Fairies, 1853)”
― Charles Dickens, Works of Charles Dickens

“Trifles make the sum of life. ”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I wonder if people will ever say, "Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring." And they'll say, "Yes, that's one of my favorite stories. Frodo was really courageous, wasn't he, Dad?" "Yes, m'boy, the most famousest of hobbits. And that's saying a lot.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman

“We're all stories, in the end.”
― Steven Moffat

“And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“some people aren’t just people, but a place—a whole world. Sometimes you find someone you could live in for the rest of your life.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl