Kate Farrell > Kate's Quotes

“In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Writing implies faith in someone listening,/ different in content but not need/ from the child who cries in the night./ Making is an attack on dying, on chaos,/ on blind inertia, on the second law/ of thermodynamics, on indifference, on cold,/ on contempt, on the silence/ that does not follow the chord resolved,/ the sentence spoken, but the something/ that cannot be said.”
― Marge Piercy, The Twelve-Spoked Wheel Flashing: Poems

“Think and wonder, wonder and think.”
― Dr. Seuss

“When the starry sky, a vista of open seas, or a stained-glass window shedding purple beams fascinate me, there is a cluster of meaning, of colors, of words, of caresses, there are light touches, scents, sighs, cadences that arise, shroud me, carry me away, and sweep me beyond the things I see, hear, or think, The "sublime" object dissolves in the raptures of a bottomless memory. It is such a memory, which, from stopping point to stopping point, remembrance to remembrance, love to love, transfers that object to the refulgent point of the dazzlement in which I stray in order to be.”
― Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (European Perspectives: a Series in Social Thought & Cultural Ctiticism)

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Today is the tomorrow you were promised yesterday.”
― Shaun Tan, The Lost Thing

“The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song.

Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity

“I like good strong words that mean something…”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“I've been saying it so long to you, you just wouldn't listen. Every time you said 'Farm Boy do this' you thought I was answering 'As you wish' but that's only because you were hearing wrong. 'I love you' was what it was, but you never heard.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Have fun storming the castle!”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“An adult life...is a slowly emerging design, with shifting components, occasional dramatic disruptions, and fresh creative arrangements.”
― Jill Ker Conway

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight
On the empty sky.

—The Creation of Éa”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Remember, the enemy's gate is down.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“A person's a person, no matter how small.”
― Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who!

“I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one-hundred percent!”
― Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg

“A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.”
― Dorothy Sayers , Gaudy Night

“Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Clouds of Witness

“Do you know how to pick a lock?'
'Not in the least, I'm afraid.'
'I often wonder what we go to school for,' said Wimsey.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

“Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything. If you never let that happen, then you just accumulate facts, and they begin to rattle around inside of you.”
― E. L. Konigsburg

“Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information. Don't ever piss one off. ”
― Spider Robinson

“If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.”
― Spider Robinson

“The future cannot blame the present, just as the present cannot blame the past. The hope is always here, always alive, but only your fierce caring can fan it into a fire to warm the world.”
― Susan Cooper, Silver on the Tree