Rita > Rita's Quotes

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”
― Stephen King

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books.”
― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“People are stupid. They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.”
― Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule

“It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.”
― Adlai E. Stevenson

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
― Terry Pratchett

“It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“Give me an honest con man any day.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Bessie: 'Why don't you get married?'
Zooey: 'I like riding in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window anymore when you're married.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the tattooed lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“The best teachers impart knowledge through sleight of hand, like a magician.”
― Kate Betts, My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang, and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine

“You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'

Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'

The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights, wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of the writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“The connection was so bad, and I couldn’t talk at all during most of the call. How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person at the other end shouts back ‘What?”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“Give me a story that just makes me unreasonably vigilant. Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“If only you’d remember before ever you sit down to write that you’ve been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart’s choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won’t even underline that. It’s too important to be underlined.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“I live alone (but catless, I'd like everybody to know)....”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“Franny has the measles, for one thing. Incidentally, did you hear her last week? She went on at beautiful length about how she used to fly all around the apartment when she was four and no one was home. The new announcer is worse than Grant - if possible, even worse than Sullivan in the old days. He said she surely dreamt that she was able to fly. The baby stood her ground like an angel. She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction