Ricci > Ricci's Quotes

“The way he said her name made my heart cramp. In all my years of word collecting, I've learned this to be a tried and true fact: I can very often tell how much a person loves another person by the way they say their name. I think that's one of the best feelings in the world, when you know your name is safe in another person's mouth. When you know they'll never shout it out like a cuss word, but say it or whisper it like a once-upon-a-time.”
― Natalie Lloyd, A Snicker of Magic

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

“No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”
― Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society

“Okay, we didn’t work, and all
memories to tell you the truth aren’t good.
But sometimes there were good times.
Love was good. I loved your crooked sleep
beside me and never dreamed afraid.

There should be stars for great wars
like ours.”
― Sandra Cisneros (Author)

“When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.”
― John Dewey, How We Think

“The half life of love is forever.”
—Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her”
― Robyn Collins, The Entwhistle Experiment Book 1: Glued

“I know what it means to be moved by a book in my body so much that I go looking for its analog in the real world.

[From an interview with Complex magazine, 12/2012]”
― Junot Díaz

“It's never the changes we want that change everything.”
― Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Thinking as a Science

“Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book?" asked Mrs. Dodypol. "It depends," says I, "how much you used the dictionary before you read it.”
― Alexander Theroux, Darconville's Cat

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
― James D. Nicoll

“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.”
― Junot Diaz

“You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?”
― Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“Ana Iris once asked me if I loved him and I told her about the lights in my old home in the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they would go out or not. You put down your things and you waited and couldn't do anything really until the lights decided. This, I told her, is how I feel.”
― Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“It's still National Library Week. You should be especially nice to a librarian today, or tomorrow. Sometime this week, anyway. Probably the librarians would like tea. Or chocolates. Or a reliable source of funding.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”
― Stephen Fry

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”
― John Keats

“It's so weird how life is so full of moving around--people coming and going, people passing by each other all day long. You never know which person's going to steal your heart. You never know which is going to settle your soul. All you can do is look. And hope. And believe.”
― Natalie Lloyd, A Snicker of Magic

“Home isn't just a house or a city or a place; home is what happens when you're brave enough to love people.”
― Natalie Lloyd, A Snicker of Magic

“Some people are born starry. Some people shine so bright you can't help but sit back and stare. Some people can't help but shine.”
― Natalie Lloyd, A Snicker of Magic

“Oliver's boardroom was actually a library. A good library. A library where books looked worn-out and well read and loved on. The library was two stories tall with a balcony wrapped around the top level. The big window on the top floor was propped half open. A rebel beam of sunlight pushed through the clouds, shining through the rain beads stuck to the screen and glass. And then that strange, golden rain light shone warm and pretty over Oliver's books. I wondered if the sun had missed the books, had waited as long as it possibly cold to shine over those spines again. I knew how that felt, to love a story so much you didn't just want to read it, you wanted to feel it.”
― Natalie Lloyd, A Snicker of Magic

“Mama glanced down at me. "Do you have a crush on him?"
"Not a crush." I shook my head. "More like an inflate. He makes me feel the opposite of crushed. He makes my heart feel like a balloon, like it's going to blow up and fly right out of my chest.”
― Natalie Lloyd, A Snicker of Magic

“I am looking for friends. What does that mean -- tame?"

"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties."

"To establish ties?"

"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world....”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“People have forgotten this truth," the fox said. "But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you've been in before - you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun