bec. > bec.'s Quotes

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
― Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

“A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.”
― Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

“They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.”
― Caroline Gordon

“I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“I was obsessed. I wouldn't quit. My grades suffered. I didn't care.”
― Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“Sarcasm is the last refuge of the imaginatively bankrupt.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

“Malachi scowled. "I don't remember the Clave inviting you into the Glass City, Magnus Bane."
"They didn't," Magnus said. "Your wards are down."
"Really?" the Consul's voice dripped sarcasm. "I hadn't noticed."
Magnus looked concerned. "That's terrible. Someone should have told you." He glanced at Luke. "Tell him the wards are down.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Glass

“Well I'm not kissing the mundane," said Jace. "I'd rather stay down here and rot."
"Forever?" said Simon. "Forever is an awfully long time."
Jace raised his eyebrows, "I knew it," he said, "you want to kiss me, don't you?"
Simon threw his hands up in exasperation. "Of course not but if-"
"I guess it's true what they say," observed Jace. "There are no straight men in the trenches."
"That's atheists jackass," said Simon furiously. "There are no atheists in the trenches.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes

“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Asscrown," I muttered under my breath as I headed to my next class. I wasn't proud of swearing at a complete stranger, no. but he started it.

Noah matched my pace. "Don't you mean 'assclown'?" He looked amused.

"No," I said, louder this time. "I mean asscrown. The crown on top of the asshat that covers the asshole of the assclown. The very zenith in the hierarchy of asses," I said, as though I was reading from a dictionary of modern profanity.

"I guess you nailed me then.”
― Michelle Hodkin, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer

“When you convert a good book to a film. stupid things happen”
― Jesse Andrews, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Clothing left on the bed unfolded. Books stained with coffee spots. Tabs not paid until the last possible second. Boys kissed and then forgotten in a week’s time.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

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

“She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“If after reading this book you come to my home and brutally murder me, I do not blame you.”
― Jesse Andrews, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

“let’s face it: Most girls are annoying. I mean, most humans are annoying, so it’s not specific to girls. Also, I don’t really mean “annoying.” I guess I mean that most humans like to try to fuck up your plans.”
― Jesse Andrews, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

“I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero