Kat > Kat's Quotes

“She always wears her sunglasses, even when it rains.”
― Anne Berest, How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are: Love, Style, and Bad Habits

“Food processing began as a way to extend the shelf life of food by protecting it from these competitors. This is often accomplished by making the food less appealing to them, by removing nutrients from it”
― Michael Pollan, Food Rules: An Eater's Manual

“I think you intentionally overreacted. Like killing a fly with a baseball bat, just to make sure it never bothers you again.”
― Kelley Armstrong, Visions

“Well! I’m glad you didn’t call him a buffoon.” “Or pompous,” Pauline added. “Or ignorant,” Jeb chimed in. “Or an ass,” Kaden said. “I didn’t call him an ass.” Rafe grunted. “You may as well have.” Now”
― Mary E. Pearson, The Beauty of Darkness

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams

“Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Some ghosts are so quiet you would hardly know they were there.”
― Bernie Mcgill, The Butterfly Cabinet

“I'm accustomed to reading Georgian and Victorian letters and sometimes you simply know in your gut that a blithe sentence is covering up a deeper emotion.”
― Sara Sheridan

“So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“It is 1908.

The stars shone above in the night sky as a steamship floated among the clouds.

It's captain, Captain Otra, looked at his watch. He was ahead of his delivery schedule by 30 minutes to deliver the British Government it's much-needed order of concentrated milk and goat cheese from the shores of New Zealand.

He had inherited the business from his wife's father. His wife had passed roughly 5 years ago.

His daughter Lux Otra was tinkering for the hundredth time on her grandfather's sky faring compass, taking it apart and putting it back together. Each time she fixed, the compass worked perfectly again. Memorizing these intricate steps would give her a temporary satisfaction but now she couldn't do it anymore. She set the compass down and sighed in frustration.”
― bellatuscana, Saving Time

“We are ghosts in Victorian gowns,
lilac apparitions with parasols…”
― Simone Muench

“To adorn her in somebody else’s eyes; never again in mine.”
― Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

“It is perhaps little wonder that the end of Victorianism almost exactly coincided with the invention of psychoanalysis.”
― Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

“Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“Beware how you give your heart.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“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

“Use a knife?” he sputters. “Would you prefer a revolver?” Isla says. “Although, now that you mention it—” “I did not mention it. You did.” “I should like a revolver. One of those tiny ones that American ladies carry in their handbags.” “They do not carry pistols in their handbags, Isla. You have been reading too many of those novels of yours.” “But one would fit in a handbag, would it not? That is an excellent idea, Hugh. Thank you for suggesting it.” “I did not suggest it.”
― Kelley Armstrong, A Rip Through Time

“I am human,” the large beast said quietly.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn Trilogy

“You!” Adolin exclaimed. “Me!” Wit replied. He swung down from the top of the carriage and performed a flowery bow. “Ever at your service, Brightlord Kholin.” “What did you do with my usual carriage driver?” “Nothing.” “Wit—” “What, you’re implying that I hurt the poor fellow? Does that sound like me, Adolin?”
― Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance