Craig Jarvis > Craig's Quotes

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.”
― Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

“There are no good girls gone wrong - just bad girls found out.”
― Mae West

“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”
― Christopher Morley, Pipefuls

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

“I never change, I simply become more myself.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, Solstice

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“I read like a wolf eats.
I read myself to sleep every night.”
― Gary Paulsen

“When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.”
― Wisława Szymborska, Poems New and Collected

“There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.”
― Irving Stone, Clarence Darrow for the Defense

“Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
― William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts

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

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham

“If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads.”
― Francois Mauriac

“If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age. ”
― George Burns

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Labyrinth

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.”
― Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.”
― Thomas Pynchon

“If you obey all of the rules, you miss all of the fun.”
― Katharine Hepburn

“If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books.
The book needs you.”
― Gary Paulsen, The Winter Room

“The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.”
― Katherine Mansfield

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler