Caroline Ashby > Caroline's Quotes

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?”
― A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

“If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers...”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee. Living close to nature is wonderful for your mental health.”
― Daniel Quinn, Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit

“I wish I was a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.”
― Daphne duMaurier, Rebecca

“Men are simpler than you imagine my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you—even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question.

And the reply was, Eat the strawberries.

The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“So I’m into men now, even though they can be frightening. I want a schedule-keeping, waking-up-early, wallet-carrying, non-Velcro-shoe-wearing man.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“I never knew you could have someone in your life who was pretty much on the same page about essentially everything.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
― Walt Whitman

“Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“These are the days that must happen to you.”
― Walt Whitman

“Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.”
― Walt Whitman

“Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard."

[Give me the splendid silent sun]”
― Walt Whitman, The Complete Poems

“Oh, to be alive in such an age, when miracles are everywhere, and every inch of common air throbs a tremendous prophecy, of greater marvels yet to be.”
― Walt Whitman

“Reality is crushing. The world is a wrong-sized shoe. How can anyone stand it?”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“When people fall in love, they burst into flames.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“This is what I want: I want to grab my brother’s hand and run back through time, losing years like coats falling from our shoulders.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“He's the one. And some thoughts once thought are very hard to unthink.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“My heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier.

Because I imagined it.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“He floated into the air high above the sleeping forest, his green hat spinning a few feet above his head. In his hand was the open suitcase and out of it spilled a whole sky of stars.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“His soul might be a sun. I’ve never met anyone who had the sun for a soul.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“feeling safe because Dad was in charge and it was his hand that pulled the sun up each morning and down at night.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I'm thinking the reason I've been so quiet all those years is only because Brian wasn't around yet for me to tell everything to.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun