Avid > Avid's Quotes

“Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were.
It hasn’t happened this morning, either.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“First the colours.
Then the humans.
That’s usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“The last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“for some reason, dying men always ask the question they know the answer to. perhaps it's so they can die being right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world.

She was the book thief without the words.

Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like rain.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“… it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Liesel Meminger.
The sky was dripping.
Like a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn’t quite managed.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“He had always said to himself that there could be no persistence of personality, of character, of identity, of consciousness, except through memory; yet here, to the last implication of temperament, they all persisted. The soul that was passing in its integrity through time without the helps, the crutches, of remembrance by which his own personality supported itself, why should not it pass so through eternity without that loss of identity which was equivalent to annihilation?”
― W.D. Howells

“Moira was like an elevator with open sides. She made us dizzy.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“It was like being in an elevator cut loose at the top. Falling, falling, and not knowing when you will hit.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can’t go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they’re covered with soil or stones?”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others, in plots that stretched back twenty years, her body full of sentences and moments, as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;
Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;
Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty or failed to express it;
Who has left the world better than he found it,
Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
Whose life was an inspiration;
Whose memory a benediction.”
― Bessie Anderson Stanley, More Heart Throbs Volume Two in Prose and Verse Dear to the American People And by them contributed as a Supplement to the original $10,000 Prize Book HEART THROBS

“To speak robin to a robin is like speaking French to a Frenchman”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun--which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, Secret Garden

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.”
― John Burroughs

“A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”
― John Burroughs

“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.”
― Kenneth Grahame (Wind in the Willows), The Wind in the Willows

“Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“A hot wind was blowing around my head, the strands of my hair lifting and swirling in it, like ink spilled in water.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin