Shelly > Shelly's Quotes

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“You know, I'm really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“But when people are past a certain age, you sort if stop asking them why they do things. It feels dangerous. What if you say So, Mr Penumbra, why do you want to know about Mr Tyndall's coat buttons? And he pauses, and scratches his chin, and there's an uncomfortable silence-- and we both realize he can't remember?”
― Robin Sloan

“That took balls."

"Please," I said with a snort, "that took ovaries. Of which I have two.”
― Darynda Jones, First Grave on the Right

“Some things, however, should happen in the correct order. Shoes go on after socks. Peanut butter is applied after the bread comes out of the toaster, not before. And grandchildren are born after their grandparents.”
― Rysa Walker, Timebound

“I can't imagine facing the end of the day without a story to drop into on my way towards sleep.”
― Kate Morton

“It's far more interesting to wonder what might be behind the layers of clouds than to be presented always with a simple, clear, bland blue.”
― Kate Morton

“But all the while her thoughts drew out behind her like a spider's thread, following the man as he made his way toward the road.”
― Kate Morton, The Distant Hours

“I think not. I find short hair too much fuss, always needing combing and cutting. Long hair is much easier, oddly enough.” There”
― Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice

“Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“To be thought of as the perfect woman for a man isn’t a compliment to a woman, it’s more about how a man sees himself—and what he needs.”
― Sherry Thomas, A Conspiracy in Belgravia

“She had learned that when people were bent on doing something they believed was a good deed, it was usually impossible to dissuade them.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“You can’t just do what you want, she thought. Why should Mia get to, when no one else did?”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“You know the rule.” “Not before coffee,” Gracie and Maddie said together. “What’s not before coffee?” Zach asked. “Life,” Jessie said.”
― Jenn McKinlay, Every Dog Has His Day

“The good life demands a lot of maintenance.”
― Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours

“Euripides. Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“In my time we had very few words, perhaps a hundred that we used all the time, and thirty of them were synonyms for guilt.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

“If there was anything I learned from John the Baptist, it was that the sooner you confess a mistake, the quicker you can get on to making new and better mistakes.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“Vasily’s work was consistently abysmal, so it was reported to his father—a very affluent shareholder in the Three Bells—that his son’s work was nothing if not consistent.”
― Sam Hooker, Peril in the Old Country

“Choices, numberless as grains of sand, had layered and compressed, coalescing into sediment, then into rock, until all was set in stone.”
― Tara Westover, Educated

“Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“The summits were about ambitious topics, such as, recently, leadership—leadership being something that everyone now wanted, as if the world could be made up entirely of leaders and no followers, the way children might crave an all-fireman, all-ballerina society.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Female Persuasion

“Life is always either a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.”
― Edith Wharton

“I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.”
― Barack Obama, A Promised Land