Samisha > Samisha's Quotes

“There is your truth and there is my truth. As for the universal truth, it does not exist.”
― Amish Tripathi

“You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.”
― John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“The key question isn't 'What is Evil?' The key question is 'When does the Good become Evil?”
― Amish Tripathi, The Oath of the Vayuputras

“Truth doesn't have to be liked. It only has to be spoken. Speak it out. The truth may hurt you, but it will set you free.”
― Amish Tripathi, The Secret of the Nagas

“Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“There’s people who’d expect you to take a bullet for them and they don’t bother rememb’ring yuh name.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling

“A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling

“You know, there's pride, and then there's stupidity”
― Robert Galbraith, The Silkworm

“it’s more important to be right than to be first.”
― Amish Tripathi, Scion of Ikshvaku

“She has that something, like the thread in a crystal-bead necklace. She holds it all together.”
― Amish Tripathi, Scion of Ikshvaku

“On going to funerals: "You don't have to say anything. By showing up you are reassuring them that they are not alone. Just being there is enough.”
― Kunal Nayyar, Yes, My Accent Is Real: and Some Other Things I Haven't Told You

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“Who would have thought, Mr. Jiabao,
that of this whole family, the lady with the short skirt would be the one with
a conscience?”
― Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

“When Alice fell down the rabbit hole, it was an accident, but when she stepped through the looking glass, it was of her own free will, and a braver deed by far.”
― Salman Rushdie, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I think I'll be a clown when I get grown,' said Dill.
Jem and I stopped in our tracks.
Yes sir, a clown,' he said. 'There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.'
You got it backwards, Dill,' said Jem. 'Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them.'
Well I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“When things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. It's because a little piece gets lost - the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. The whole shape has changed.”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“He believed books had an aura that protected him, that without one beside him he would die. He happily slept without women. He never slept without a book.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“Darky was always looking for the good thing, no matter how small, and consequently he often found it.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“But sometimes things are said and they’re not just words. They are everything that one person thinks of another in a sentence. Just one sentence.”
― Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“If you are happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count? Estha asked. "Does what count?" "The happiness does it count?". She knew exactly what he meant, her son with his spoiled puff. Because the truth is, that only what counts, counts....."If you eat fish in a dream, does it count?" Does it mean you've eaten fish?”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“If you're happy in a dream, does that count?”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things