Jennifer > Jennifer's Quotes

“The best guide I know to readerly judgment is our old friend Auden, who graciously summed up a lifetime of thinking about these matters in a single incisive sentence: “For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don’t like it; I can see this is good, and, though at present I don’t like it, I believe with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don’t like it.”
― Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

“Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“Still, Temple has no illusions concerning her library's impact. Her books won't lift anyone from their low station. They won't right wrongs or save wandering souls from perdition or fill grumbling stomachs. But they might let a few scraps of sunlight fall into some lean, desolate lives. And that's something.

'The Greatest Library of Estevan, Saskatchewan”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Humans are so ill-equipped for peace.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“That time always ends a second before you’re ready.

That life is the minutes you want minus one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“But Muriel’s always been like strong perfume. Better in small doses. And at a distance.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Déjà vu. Déjà su. Déjà vécu. ”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Estelle used to call these the restless days, when the warmer-blooded gods began to stir, and the cold ones began to settle. When dreamers were most prone to bad ideas, and wanderers were likely to get lost.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Not only are women expected to weather sexual violence, intimate partner violence, workplace discrimination, institutional subordination, the expectation of free domestic labor, the blame for our own victimization, and all the subtler, invisible cuts that undermine us daily, we are not even allowed to be angry about it.”
― Lindy West, The Witches are Coming

“The problem is people weaseling out of the growth. We are addicted to not being inconvenienced by reality. Even in mundane circumstances.”
― Lindy West, The Witches Are Coming

“When people see tears, they stop listening to your hands or your words or anything else you have to say. And it doesn't matter if the tears are angry or sad, frightened or frustrated. All they see is a girl crying.”
― Victoria Schwab, Gallant

“It is never quite safe to think we have done with life. When we imagine we have finished our story fate has a trick of turning the page and showing us yet another chapter.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Rainbow Valley

“We fool ourselves that we can protect the people we love, because if we accepted the truth we’d never let them out of our sight.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“She was not the best cook, so she did not cook at all—it was important to know your limitations and not waste time attempting to do poorly what you could have someone else do for you.”
― Juliet Grames, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

“Modernity has stripped some of the magic out of the ways we live, and die”
― Juliet Grames, The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

“That's the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people's.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Another morning comes. It always does. Time always moves at the same rate, only feelings have different speeds. Every day can mark a whole lifetime or a single heartbeat, depending on who you spend it with. *”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we're more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“But we weren't ready to become adults. Someone should have stopped us.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“What does it take to be a good parent? Not much. Just everything. Absolutely everything.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“It's much more difficult to have conflict when there are cookies around.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“When it comes to terror, reality’s got nothing on the power of the imagination.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Our children never warn us that they’re thinking of growing up, one day they’re just too big to want to hold our hand, it’s just as well we never know when the last time is going to be or we’d never let go.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“He’s the sort of person who runs toward a fire. No hesitation, no questions, he just runs. People like that are rare, but you know who they are when you see them.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners