Ames > Ames's Quotes

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that... there are many kinds of magic, after all.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Rêves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus.
You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Do you remember all of your audiences?" Marco asks.
"Not all of them," Celia says. "But I remember the people who look at me the way you do."
"What way might that be?"
"As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me."
" I am not afraid of you," Marco says.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“The world was a terrible place, cruel, pitiless, dark as a bad dream. Not a good place to live. Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness - and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart / Inkspell / Inkdeath

“Because fear kills everything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn't ask for anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly. Love, truth, beauty, wisdom and consolation against death. Who had said that? Someone else who loved books.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“It's a good idea to have your own books with you in a strange place”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“Writing stories is a kind of magic, too.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that's always changing!”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Onion sauce! Onion Sauce!”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Living in that childish wonder is a most beautiful feeling - I can so well remember it. There was always something more - behind and beyond everything - to me, the golden spectacles were very, very big.”
― Kate Greenaway

“The most difficult thing to read is time. Maybe because it changes so many things.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I made a wish on this tree years ago," Marco says.

"What did you wish for?" Bailey asks.

Marco leans forward and whispers in Bailey's ear. "I wished for her.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
― Marthe Troly-Curtin, Phrynette Married

“Na razrusha'ya. I am not ruined. E'ya razrushost. I am ruination.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising