Julia > Julia's Quotes

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“I'm not the world's greatest expert, but I would have thought that the wizards, witches, trolls, unicorns, ... broomsticks and spells would have given her a clue?' - when J.K. Rowling insisted she wasn't writing fantasy.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Anyway, if you stop tellin' people it's all sorted out afer they're dead, they might try sorting it all out while they're alive. ”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Hey!” I said, indignation filling me. “I’m immortal! Doesn’t that mean I won’t get saggy boobs and gray hair? Because if it doesn’t mean that, I want a refund—”
― Katie MacAlister, Holy Smokes

“What do you know about dragons?”
“They're big, scaly, four-legged creatures with wings who terrorized small villages until a virgin was offered up as a sacrifice.”
His grinned again. “I do miss the virgins.”
― Katie MacAlister, You Slay Me

“It was a time before Facebook and Instagram and texting. I imagine it must be easier now, for college students. Home must not feel so far away anymore. But how do you cut the apron strings if the strings are virtual?”
― Kirstie Collins Brote, Beware of Love in Technicolor

“Everyone forgets Icarus also flew.”
― Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven: Poems

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Even a book can be dangerous in the wrong hands, and when that happens, you blame the hands, but you also read the book.”
― Erika Johansen, The Queen of the Tearling

“Never underestimate the power of stupid.”
― Sheila Turnage, Three Times Lucky

“My heart leaped like the cheerleader I will never be.”
― Sheila Turnage, Three Times Lucky

“Everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories...they're the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, loss and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Only the details are different. ”
― Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters

“All were merged into one smoothly working machine; they were, in fact, a poem of motion, a symphony of swinging blades.”
― Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

“Everything I make up is nothing compared to her reality.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“She wanted a life not full of things, but stories, so many stories that, if they'd had weight and heft, they wouldn't have fit into a thousand suitcases.”
― Sarah Addison Allen

“But we spend all our lives looking for puzzle pieces that will give us a clearer picture of ourselves, of where we're supposed to go and who we're supposed to be.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“But don't define yourself by what you *don't* want to do. Define yourself by what you do want to do.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Everything is a matter of choice, and when we choose are we not gambling on the unknown and its being a wise choice?And isn't it free choice that makes individuals of us? We are eternally free to choose ourselves and our futures. I believe myself that life is quite comparable to a map like this a constant choice of direction and route.”
― Dorothy Gilman

“I wasn't offering her pity," Mrs. Caswell said impatiently. "Tragedies don't interest me, tragedies and heartbreaks are all alike, what matters is how a person meets them, how they survive them. Given the inevitability of losses and disappointments in life, that's where the challenge is and the uniqueness. I was offering her sympathy.”
― Dorothy Gilman, Incident at Badamya

“If life was like a body of water, she had asked that she be allowed to walk again in its shallows; instead she had been abruptly seized by strong currents and pushed into deep water.”
― Dorothy Gilman, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

“It wasn't that she had so much character, thought Mrs. Pollifax, but rather that always in her life she had found it difficult to submit. The list of her small rebellions was endless. Surely there was room for one more?”
― Dorothy Gilman

“That’s what terrorism is, basically—pure theater. Nothing in particular is ever accomplished by it, other than to focus attention on a small group of people who seize absolute power by threatening everything that holds civilization together.”
― Dorothy Gilman, Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha

“You haven't been planting seeds of insurrection, have you, Duchess?"
"Well, it's a change from planting geraniums," she retorted.”
― Dorothy Gilman, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

“Brainwashing, thought Mrs. Pollifax contemptuously, and suddenly realized that she was not afraid. She had endured other crises without losing her dignity--births, widowhood, illnesses--and she was experienced enough to know now that everything worthwhile took time and loneliness, perhaps even one's death as well.”
― Dorothy Gilman

“Maybe everyone lives with terror every minute of every day and buries it, never stopping long enough to look. Or maybe it's just me. I'm speaking here of your ordinary basic terrors like the meaning of life or what if there's no meaning at all...Sometimes I think we're all tightrope walkers suspended on a wire two thousand feet in the air, and so long as we never look down we're okay, but some of us lose momentum and look down for a second and are never quite the same again: we know.”
― Dorothy Gilman

“It's terribly important for everyone, at any age, to live to his full potential. Otherwise a kind of dry rot sets in, a rust, a disintegration of personality,”
― Dorothy Gilman

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