Helen > Helen's Quotes

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

[Cosmos, Part 11: The Persistence of Memory (1980)]”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

“In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“That which does not kill us,” I said, “has to get up extra early in the morning if it wants to get us next time.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Broken Homes

“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

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

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Work: A Story of Experience

“The process of elimination, combined with a modicum of common sense, will always assist us to arrive at the correct conclusion with the maximum of possible accuracy and the minimum of hard labor. Which being translated means: I guessed it.”
― Margery Allingham, Look to the Lady

“She rose and followed her bust from the room.”
― Margery Allingham

“Albert Campion: 'I’m serious!'
Lugg: 'That’s unhealthy in itself.”
― Margery Allingham, Mystery Mile

“Women are terribly shocking to men, my dear. Don't understand them. Like them. It saves such a lot of hurting one way and the other.”
― Margery Allingham, The Fashion in Shrouds

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
― Agatha Christie

“It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them. ”
― Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”
― Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

“A city's only ever three hot meals away from anarchy.”
― Alastair Reynolds, Terminal World

“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
― Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
― Terry Pratchett

“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

“It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“And what would humans be without love?"
RARE, said Death.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.”
― Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

“There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.”
― Terry Pratchett

“His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.”
― Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies