Barbara > Barbara's Quotes

“I am haunted by humans.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision. You gone have to ask yourself, "Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“I always order the banned books from a black market dealer in California, figuring if the State of Mississippi banned them, they must be good.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“I listened wide-eyed, stupid. Glowing by her voice in the dim light. If chocolate was a sound, it would've been Constantine's voice singing. If singing was a color, it would've been the color of that chocolate.”
― Kathryn Stockett, The Help

“....we ain't doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen.”
― Kathryn Stockett

“I used to believe in em (lines). I don't anymore. They in our heads. Lines between black and white ain't there neither. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too.”
― Kathryn Stockett

“Catherine Land liked the beginnings of things. The pure white possibility of the empty room, the first kiss, the first swipe at larceny. And endings, she liked endings, too. The drama of the smashing glass, the dead bird, the tearful goodbye, the last awful word which could never be unsaid or unremembered.
It was the middles that gave her pause. This, for all its forward momentum, this was a middle. The beginnings were sweet, the endings usually bitter, but the middles were only the tightrope you walked between the one and the other. No more than that.”
― Robert Goolrick, A Reliable Wife

“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“As for the river, it just kept moving,as river do--as rivers do. Under the logs, the body of the young Canadian moved with the river, which jostled him to and fro--to and fro. If, at this moment in time Twisted River also appeared restless, even impatient, maybe the river itself wanted the boy's body to move on, too, move on, too.”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“I ask not for any crown
But that which all may win;
Nor try to conquer any world
Except the one within.”
― Louisa May Alcott

“Any contractor who would construct a flat-roofed, two-storey building in Northern New Hampshire was enough of a moron to not know how many assholes a human being had.”
― John Irving

“Thus we try to keep our heroes alive; hence we remember them.”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“We've been an empire in decline since I can remember," Ketchum said bluntly; he wasn't kidding. "We are a lost nation, Danny. Stop farting around.”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“The hardest thing to accept about the passage of time is that the people who mattered most to us are all wrapped up in parenthesis”
― John Irving

“We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly--as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth--the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“The one critisism the author of Slaugherhouse-Five would make of the young writer was what he called a punctuation problem. Mr. Vonnegut didn't like all the semicolons. 'People will probably figure out that you went to college -- you don't have to try to prove it to them,' he told Danny.”
― John Irving, Last Night in Twisted River

“From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“That which you mistake for madness is but an overacuteness of the senses.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“I have not only labored solely for the benefit of others (receiving for myself a miserable pittance), but have been forced to model my thoughts at the will of men whose imbecility was evident to all but themselves"
— Edgar Allan Poe”
― Daniel Stashower, The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder

“What is to prevent a daily newspaper from being made the greatest organ of social life? Books have had their day-the theaters have had their day-the temple of religion has had its day. A newspaper can be made to take the lead of all these in the great heaven , and save more from Hell, than all the churches and chapels in New York-besides making money at the same time" "Shakespeare is the great genius of the drama, Scott of the novel, Milton and Byron of the poem, and I mean to be the genius of the newspaper press." James Gordon Bennett, editor ot he New York Herald in 1841”
― Daniel Stashower, The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder

“The Press is the living jury of the Nation." James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald in 1841”
― Daniel Stashower, The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder

“..bear in mind that, in general, it is the object of our newspapers rather to create a sensation-to make a point-than to further the cause of truth." Dupin in "The Mystery of Marie Roget”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt

“I believe there is a great deal too much mutual confession going on today, as if sharing one’s problems somehow makes them go away. All it really does, of course, is increase the number of people who have to worry about a particular issue.”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

“I know something of shame [...] How can we not all feel it? We are all small-minded people, creeping about the earth grubbing for our own advantage and making the very mistakes for which we want to humiliate our neighbors. [...] I think we wake up every day with high intentions and by dusk we have routinely fallen short. Sometimes I think God created the darkness just so he didn't have to look at us all the time.”
― Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand