Courtney Bassett > Courtney's Quotes

“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters

“Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Sometimes I looked at her sleeping face, the living flesh of it, and was overwhelmed by how precarious it was to love a living thing. She could die simply from lack of water. It hardly seemed safer than falling in love with a plant.”
― Miranda July, The First Bad Man

“As Violet and Klaus Baudelaire stood, still in their nightgown and pajamas, backstage at Count Olaf’s theater, they were of two minds, a phrase which here means “they felt two different ways at the same time.” On one hand, they were of course filled with dread.
…
On the other hand, however, they were fascinated, as they had never been backstage at a theatrical production and there was so much to see.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning

“Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would... and then someone passed me a bit of some sweet stuff, and suddenly I realized that I had been to China. So to speak. And I'd forgotten it.”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“...you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning

“I suppose I'll have to add the force of gravity to my list of enemies.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Penultimate Peril

“There were a series of closing kisses, goodbye kisses, kisses placed like lids on boxes—then the lid would pop off and need to be replaced. There, this is the final kiss—no, this is the final kiss. This one is, it really is. And now I’m just kissing that kiss good night.”
― Miranda July, The First Bad Man

“Mephistopheles: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?”
― Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus

“You know I love you,' said the other mother flatly.
'You have a very funny way of showing it,' said Coraline.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“I can’t lose the thing I’ve held onto for so long, you know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story, you know? I really, really need it to be that.”
“I know,” she says.
“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it”? I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa