amanda > amanda's Quotes

“Hope is often bitter, but it drives us, and we cling.”
― Michelle Sagara

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

“Buttercup's mother whirled on him. 'Did you forget to pay your taxes?' (This was after taxes. But everything is after taxes. Taxes were here even before stew.)”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“There might be some hours of loneliness. But there was something wonderful even in loneliness. At least you belonged to yourself when you were lonely.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Mistress Pat

“Don't be led away by those howls about realism. Remember-pine woods are just as real as pigsties and a darn sight pleasanter to be in.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

“Those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths and the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery

“Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it. Putting words on paper that have never been there in quite that way before. And although you are physically by yourself, the haunting Demon never leaves you, that Demon being the knowledge of your own terrible limitations, your hopeless inadequacy, the impossibility of ever getting it right. No matter how diamond-bright your ideas are dancing in your brain, on paper they are earthbound.”
― William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting

“Life isn't fair, it's just fairer than death, that's all.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.”
― Charles Portis, True Grit

“He shrank from hearing Margaret's very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her – while he was jealous of her – while he renounced her – he loved her sorely, in spite of himself.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“A library is infinity under a roof.”
― Gail Carson Levine

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Your father, Jo. He never loses patience, never doubts or complains, but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”
― Louisa May Alcott

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“As a child there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one...each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment.”
― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

“When you don't know everything that you could know, it's a fine time to shut your fucking noisemaker and be polite.”
― Scott Lynch, The Lies of Locke Lamora

“When you can't cheat the game, you'd best find a means to cheat the players.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

“The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them. I meet far too many people who are going to be writers 'someday.' When they are out of high school, when they've finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire . . . That is such a trap You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That's okay. I think we've all 'been there, done that.' It all starts with the writing. ”
― Robin Hobb

“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice