Kathryn > Kathryn's Quotes

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.”
― Jane Austen

“Sir,’ said Stephen, ‘I read novels with the utmost pertinacity. I look upon them--I look upon good novels--as a very valuable part of literature, conveying more exact and finely-distinguished knowledge of the human heart and mind than almost any other, with greater breadth and depth and fewer constraints.”
― Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation

“Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are always a little confused about this, as they are in the case of miracles. When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events -- the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there -- that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.”
― Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

“Though she be but little, she is fierce!”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“... poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.”
― Audre Lorde

“Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.”
― Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels

“Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“The kingdom of God is available to you in the here and the now. But the question is whether you are available to the kingdom. Our practice is to make ourselves ready for the kingdom so that it can manifest in the here and the now. You don't need to die in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. In fact, you have to be truly alive in order to do so.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“The problem is whether we are determined to go in the direction of compassion or not. If we are, then can we reduce the suffering to a minimum? If I lose my direction, I have to look for the North Star, and I go to the north. That does not mean I expect to arrive at the North Star. I just want to go in that direction.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

“I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won't be nothing. We'll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we'll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we'll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.”
― Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.”
― W.Somerset Maugham

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”
― Benjamin Franklin Wade

“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.”
― Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man

“In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love to come again to Carthage

Jessica: In such a night Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson.

Lorenzo: In such a night did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, and with an unthrift love did run from Venice, as far as Belmont.

Jessica: In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne'er a true one.

Lorenzo: In such a night did pretty Jessica (like a little shrow) slander her love, and he forgave it her.

Jessica: I would out-night you, did nobody come; but hark, I hear the footing of a man.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“The Words exploded. Great slabs of them, mountain-sized, crashed in showers of red sand. The universe poured in. Dorfl felt the universe pick it up and bowl it over and then lift it off its feet and up… …and now the golem was among the universe. It could feel it all around, the purr of it, the busyness, the spinning complexity of it, the roar… There were no Words between you and It. You belonged to It, It belonged to you. You couldn’t turn your back on It because there It was, in front of you. Dorfl was responsible for every tick and swerve of It. You couldn’t say, “I had orders.” You couldn’t say, “It’s not fair.” No one was listening. There were no Words. You owned yourself. Dorfl orbited a pair of glowing suns and hurtled off again. Not Thou Shalt Not. Say I Will Not. Dorfl”
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay