Sarah > Sarah's Quotes

“Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“If you can’t see that your own culture has its own set of interests, emotions, and biases, how can you expect to deal successfully with someone else’s culture?”
― Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

“Our view of reality is only a view, not reality itself.”
― Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures

“Your affection is not meaningless to me, puny one. I shall devour you another day.”
― Scott Hawkins, The Library at Mount Char

“No real thing can be so perfect as memory, and she will need a perfect thing if she is to survive. She will warm herself on the memory of you when there is nothing else, and be sustained.”
― Scott Hawkins, The Library at Mount Char

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: you’re falling to the floor crying thinking, “I am falling to the floor crying,” but there’s an element of the ridiculous to it — you knew it would happen and, even worse, while you’re on the floor crying you look at the place where the wall meets the floor and you realize you didn’t paint it very well.”
― Richard Siken

“There was consolation: The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned. Sometimes, she could be in front of a train kiosk or the window of a bookstore, and she could feel Noa's small hand when he was a boy, and she would close her eyes and think of his sweet grassy smell and remember that he had always tried his best. At those moments, it was good to be alone to hold on to him.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Neither had realized the loneliness each had lived with for such a long time until the loneliness was interrupted by genuine affection.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“We like the idea that there's always someone responsible for any given event, because it helps us make sense of the world. We like that so much that sometimes we blame ourselves, just so that there's someone to blame. But not everything is under our control, or even anyone's control.”
― Ted Chiang, Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom

“She wants to tell them that Blue Gamma was more right than it knew: experience isn’t merely the best teacher; it’s the only teacher. If she’s learned anything raising Jax, it’s that there are no shortcuts; if you want to create the common sense that comes from twenty years of being in the world, you need to devote twenty years to the task. You can’t assemble an equivalent collection of heuristics in less time; experience is algorithmically incompressible.”
― Ted Chiang, The Lifecycle of Software Objects

“Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Our existence deforms the universe. That's responsibility.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Nobody died. how can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?"
"Then what died? who are you mourning?"
"A point of view.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake

“Charitably... I think... sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And, in the end, there were, perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 10: The Wake

“What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“There is a time for any fledgling artist where one's taste exceeds one's abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“I think there’s something beautiful about being lucky enough to witness a thing on its way out.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“Then how,” Dex said, “how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?” Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“The House is valuable because it is the House. It is enough in and of Itself. It is not the means to an end.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi