Jutta Swietlinski > Jutta's Quotes

“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you.”
― Beatrix Potter

“The kiss isn’t even unexpected, but it overwhelms me completely.
It’s only when Laura’s lips touch mine that I realize how much I’ve been longing for this.
I hold my breath when she wraps her arms around me and pulls me close. It’s intoxicating to feel her so close to me, to smell her, to taste her.”
― Jutta Swietlinski, Flowing like Water

“She looks into my eyes very intensely for a moment before taking another truffle. “I’m always open to attempts at bribery of this kind,” she says mischievously and puts the treat in her mouth with relish.
I have to swallow and take out a chocolate as well. Suddenly I have a ravenous appetite.”
― Jutta Swietlinski, Flowing like Water

“Laura turns her gaze back to me, smirking mischievously. “Do you like chocolate?”
I notice a delighted grin forming on my face. “‘Like’ is not the right word. I LOVE chocolate!”
― Jutta Swietlinski, Flowing like Water

“When I asked her yesterday evening by text message, she only told me very briefly that she’s “quite low-maintenance” when it comes to food. However, I did remember that she had told me she eats mostly vegetarian but isn’t very dogmatic about it.
I’m glad to know that, because this way I was able to refrain from roasting a goose. Or cooking a suckling pig. Or half a cow.”
― Jutta Swietlinski, Flowing like Water

“Because I’ve also realized very clearly that I love you. I have loved you for a long time and I am very sure that I will always love you. You are a wonderful, vibrant, incredibly lovable person, you have enriched my life and shown me who I really am, and I will be eternally grateful to you for that.”
― Jutta Swietlinski, Returning Home to Her

“All of a sudden, I feel like a mouse that the cat is playing with for a few more moments before the defenseless little rodent is finally wolfed down.
And the worst thing is that I don’t care at all.
Play with me, eat me, if you only kiss me first …”
― Jutta Swietlinski, Returning Home to Her

“Linet, it’s a great pleasure to meet you! What can I offer you? Sex on the Beach? A Screaming Orgasm? And maybe something to drink as well?” She winks at me mischievously.”
― Jutta Swietlinski, Returning Home to Her

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“I read a lot. I always have, but in those two years I gorged myself on books with a voluptuous, almost erotic gluttony. I would go to the local library and take out as many as I could, and then lock myself in the bedsit and read solidly for a week. I went for old books, the older the better--Tolstoy, Poe, Jacobean tragedies, a dusty translation of Laclos--so that when I finally resurfaced, blinking and dazzled, it took me days to stop thinking in their cool, polished, crystalline rhythms.”
― Tana French, In the Woods

“A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an emergency exit, a life-raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen instead”
― Caitlin Moran

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it."

(Casual Chance, 1964)”
― Colette

“Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.”
― Margaret Atwood

“A word after a word after a word is power.”
― Margaret Atwood

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“A childhood without books – that would be no childhood. That would be like being shut out from the enchanted place where you can go and find the rarest kind of joy.”
― Astrid Lindgren

“The day women stop reading—that’s the day the novel dies!”
― John Irving, Avenue of Mysteries

“If you eat enough books, you start pooping out words.”
― Caitlin Moran

“A library is such a potent symbol of a town's values: each one closed down might as well be six thousand stickers plastered over every available surface, reading "WE CHOSE TO BECOME MORE STUPID AND DULL.”
― caitlin moran

“You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.”
― Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

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

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
― Stephen King

“The scariest moment is always just before you start.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”
― Stephen King

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”
― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.”
― Stephen King

“There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.”
― Stephen King