Steph > Steph's Quotes

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“Beneath every cynic there's a frustrated romantic.”
― Peter Bishop

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Books are more than doctors, of course. Some novels are loving, lifelong companions; some give you a clip around the ear; others are friends who wrap you in warm towels when you've got those autumn blues. And some...well, some are pink candy floss that tingles in your brain for three seconds and leaves a blissful voice. Like a short, torrid love affair.”
― Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

“We cannot decide to love. We cannot compel anyone to love us. There's no secret recipe, only love itself. And we are at its mercy--there's nothing we can do.”
― Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

“Do you know that there's a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? It's called the hurting time, Jean Perdu. It's a bog; it's where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don't underestimate the transition, Jeanno, between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride.”
― Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

“Do we only decide in retrospect that we've been happy? Don't we notice when we're happy, or do we realize only much later that we were?”
― Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

“Books can do many things, but not everything. We have to live the important things, not read them.”
― Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

“Sometimes you’re swimming in unwept tears and you’ll go under if you store them up inside.”
― Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

“Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone...It's just that you're chipped away at from within, and no one sees how many splinters and layers have been taken off you. You become ever thinner and more brittle inside, until eve the slightest emotion bowls you over. One hug, and you think you're going to shatter and be lost.”
― Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

“Death doesn't matter
It makes no difference to life.
We will always remain what we were to each other.”
― Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop

“And, just as it only takes a moment to die, it only takes a moment to live. You just close your eyes and let every futile fear slip away. And then, in this new state, free from fear, you ask yourself: who am I? If I could live without doubt what would I do? If I could be kind without the fear of being fucked over? If I could love without fear of being hurt? If I could taste the sweetness of today without thinking of how I will miss that taste tomorrow? If I could not fear the passing of time and the people it will steal? Yes. What would I do? Who would I care for? What battle would I fight? Which paths would I step down? What joys would I allow myself? What internal mysteries would I solve? How, in short, would I live?”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“Everything is going to be all right. Or, if not, everything is going to be, so let's not worry.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“A problem with living in the twenty-first century..... we are made to feel poor on thirty thousand pounds a year. To feel poorly travelled if we have only been to ten other countries. To feel old if we have a wrinkle. To feel ugly if we aren’t photo shopped and filtered.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“It made me lonely. And when I say lonely, I mean the kind of loneliness that howls through you like a desert wind. It wasn't just the loss of people I had known but also the loss of myself. The loss of who I had been when I had been with them.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“The key to happiness wasn't being yourself, because what did that even mean? Everyone had many selves. No. The key to happiness is finding the lie that suits you best.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“There is only the present. Just as every object on earth contains similar and interchanging atoms, so every fragment of time contains aspects of every other.
In those monents that burst alive the present lasts for ever, and I know there are many more presents to live. I understand you can be free. I understand that the way you stop time is by stopping being ruled by it. I am no longer drowning in my past, or fearful of my future. How can I be?
The future is you.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“This is so often the way with life. You spend so much time waiting for something – a person, a feeling, a piece of information – that you can’t quite absorb it when it is in front of you. The hole is so used to being a hole it doesn’t know how to close itself.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“There comes a time when the only way to start living is to tell the truth. To be who you really are, even if it is dangerous.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“Everything in life is uncertain. That is how you know you are existing in the world, the uncertainty. Of course, this is why we sometimes want to return to the past, because we know it, or think we do. It's a song we've heard.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“That is the whole thing with the future. You don’t know. At some point you have to accept that you don’t know. You have to stop flicking ahead and just concentrate on the page you are on.”
― Matt Haig, How to Stop Time

“Maybe we'd all be much more effective communicators if we all shut up more.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Dormant true love, there for everybody, just waiting to be found, erupting when the thread of existence collides with chance and the eyes of two lovers meet. Boom. From what I’ve seen of it, true love is hard. Real romance has death in it. It has midnight shakes and flecks of shit across a bedsheet. True love like this dies if it has to wait for fate. True love like this asks lovers to cast aside what is meant to be and work with what is.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“I’m a good man,’ Slim says. ‘But I’m a bad man too. And that’s like all men, kid. We all got a bit o’ good and a bit o’ bad in us. The tricky part is learnin’ how to be good all the time and bad none of the time. Some of us get that right. Most of us don’t.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“The downside is life is short and has to end. The upside is it comes with bread, wine and books.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Take heart, she seems to say. The world has been on the brink of ending before. The dust has always been waiting to swallow us. People have always struggled and suffered. Your poverty is not shameful. It is not a failure of your character. Life, by its very nature, is precarious. And your struggles are never for nothing.”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“Still, Temple has no illusions concerning her library's impact. Her books won't lift anyone from their low station. They won't right wrongs or save wandering souls from perdition or fill grumbling stomachs. But they might let a few scraps of sunlight fall into some lean, desolate lives. And that's something.

'The Greatest Library of Estevan, Saskatchewan”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“How intimately a book is related to the tree and it’s rings, she thinks. The layers of time, preserved, for all to examine.”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“It’s hard to think about nothing. I’ve tried it. You end up thinking about everything and getting stressed out. It’s best to just think of one thing. A good thing.”
― Diana Evans, 26a

“It wasn’t you, you know,’ Michael said in the end. ‘That wasn’t the reason. You were just a device in the machine of our breaking, and we needed to break. It’s not so bad, when it finally happens. You think the world is going to collapse around you but it doesn’t. You can see yourself clearly again. You realise that the fear was the worst thing.”
― Diana Evans, Ordinary People