Sara > Sara's Quotes

“Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“Youth can not know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.”
― J.K. Rowling , Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“He didn't know of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight, and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. "I know," he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.”
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

“All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“What are you doing with all those books anyway?" Ron asked, limping back to his bed.
"Just trying to decide which ones to take with us," said Hermione. "When we're looking for the Horcruxes."
"Oh, of course," said Ron, clapping a hand to his forehead. "I forgot we'll be hunting down Voldemort in a mobile library".”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“I should take a photo.'
'No. Just remember it, and us in it.”
― Ali Shaw, The Girl With Glass Feet

“Kuoletko sinä?" kysyin, ja äiti nauroi kuin olisin kertonut vitsin, ja se nauru merkitsi minulle enemmän kuin miljoona eitä.”
― Sarah Winman, When God Was a Rabbit

“There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said.
Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Once, long ago, Parminder had told Barry the story of Bhai Kanhaiya, the Sikh hero who had administered to the needs of those wounded in combat, whether friend or fo. When asked why he gave aid indiscriminately, Bahai Kanhaiya had replied that the light of God shone from every soul, and that he had been unable to distinguish between them.”
― J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

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

“Never underestimate how extraordinarily difficult it is to understand a situation from another person's point of view.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“The moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“What wouldn't I give now for a never-changing map of the ever-constant ineffable? To possess, as it were, an atlas of clouds.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas