Jen > Jen's Quotes

“Do my thoughts just dream of me?”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“Writing stays. It fastens words down. A man can speak his mind and some nasty wee scuggan will write it down and who knows what he’ll do with those words? Ye might as weel nail a man’s shadow tae the wall!”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“A word writ doon can hang a man”
― Terry Pratchett

“An' writin' even goes on sayin' a man's wurds after he's deid! Ye cannae tell me that's right!”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Day and night, their frail and crippled ships defy the tempest.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Widow Ching-Pirate

“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”
― Guy de Maupassant

“Sooner or later all things are numbers, yes?”
― Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

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

“Everybody, professors and students and Proctors the same, knew that if the sign said 'do not walk on the grass', one hopped. Anybody who didn't had failed to understand what Oxford was.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.”
― Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days

“If you're too afraid of going astray you won't go anywhere”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“If you don't know when to be a human being, you don't know when to be a witch.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Then it seemed that a cloud formed itself into an enormous bumble bee as big as a sheep. She wore a tall iron crown studded with rock crystals, the stars of the underworld.

All this may have been a collective hallucination although nobody has yet explained to me what a collective hallucination actually means.”
― Leonora Carrington

“Here’s to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy.”
― Charlaine Harris

“But always when I was without a book, my soul at once became disturbed, and my thoughts wandered.”
― Saint Teresa of Avila

“I reached out my hand, England's rivers turned and flowed the other way...
I reached out my hand, my enemies's blood stopt in their veins...
I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies' heads like a flock of starlings;
My enemies crumpled like empty sacks.
I came to them out of mists and rain;
I came to them in dreams at midnight;
I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn;
When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood...

The rain made a door for me and I went through it;
The stones made a throne for me and I sat upon it;
Three kingdoms were given to me to be mine forever;
England was given to me to be mine forever.
The nameless slave wore a silver crown;
The nameless slave was a king in a strange country...

The weapons that my enemies raised against me are venerated in Hell as holy relics;
Plans that my enemies made against me are preserved as holy texts;
Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell's sacristans and placed in a vessel of silver and ivory.
I gave magic to England, a valuable inheritance
But Englishmen have despised my gift
Magic shall be written upon the sky by the rain but they shall not be able to read it;
Magic shall be written on the faces of the stony hills but their minds shall not be able to contain it;
In winter the barren trees shall be a black writing but they shall not understand it...

Two magicians shall appear in England...
The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me;
The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction;
The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache;
The second shall see his dearest posession in his enemy's hand...

The first shall pass his life alone, he shall be his own gaoler;
The second shall tread lonely roads, the storm above his head, seeking a dark tower upon a high hillside...

I sit upon a black throne in the shadows but they shall not see me.
The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it;
The stones shall make a throne for me and I shall sit upon it...

The nameless slave shall wear a silver crown
The nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country...”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“This is the genius of my enemy! Lock a door against him and all that happens is that he learns first how to pick a lock and second how to build a better one against you!”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“How quickly was every bad thing discovered to be the fault of the previous administration (an evil set of men who wedded general stupidity to wickedness of purpose). As for the present Ministry, the Foreign Secretary said that not since the days of Antiquity had the world seen gentlemen so virtuous, so misunderstood and so horribly misrepresented by their enemies.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat a good whodunnit: the twists and turns, the clues and the red herrings and then, finally, the satisfaction of having everything explained to you in a way that makes you kick yourself because you hadn't seen it from the start.”
― Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders

“It wouldn't be my move," Jace agreed. "First the candy and flowers, then the apology letters, then the ravenous demon hordes. In that order.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

“That's why when major badasses greet each other in movies, they don't say anything, they just nod. The nod means, 'I' am a badass, and I recognize that you, too, are a badass,' but they don't say anything because they're Wolverine and Magneto and it would mess up their vibe to explain.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

“Do you remember me telling you we are practicing non-verbal spells, Potter?"
"Yes," said Harry stiffly.
"Yes, sir."
"There's no need to call me "sir" Professor."
The words had escaped him before he knew what he was saying.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“the love
some girls
have for
other girls
is
so gentle
& so soft
& so fucking
beautiful,
&
these girls
deserve
to have
better stories
than the ones
where they
are murdered
because they love
with too much
of their
hearts.

-love is never a weakness.”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in This One

“Nobody wants a house in Osaka,' he said, and it was strange to hear him switch suddenly to foreign pronunciation in the middle of his English. 'It would mean you had to live in Osaka.'

'What's wrong with it?'

'It's like . . . Birmingham.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

“I've squeezed as many bookcases in this tiny space as possible. Being surrounded by books and magazines makes me feel calm. It makes the room seem wrapped in a layer of protection. As if nothing or no one can get to me.”
― Angelo Surmelis, The Dangerous Art of Blending In

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before … — EDGAR ALLAN POE”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane