Leigh Kaisen > Leigh's Quotes

“Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“When will you learn that there isn't a word for everything?”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Once upon a time, there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered, and everything was possible. A stick could be a sword, a pebble could be a diamond, a tree, a castle. Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived in a house across the field, from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. She was queen and he was king. In the autumn light her hair shone like a crown. They collected the world in small handfuls, and when the sky grew dark, they parted with leaves in their hair.

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Dear L--
Fell asleep in a park. Started to rain. Woke up with my hat full of leaves. You are all I see when I open or close a book.

Yours,
M”
― Alexis M. Smith

“Her sister read that spiders have book lungs, which fold in and out over themselves like pages. This pleased Isabel immensely. When she learned later that humans do not also have book lungs, she was disappointed. Book lungs. It made complete sense to her. This way breath, this way life: through here.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“It's a strange product of infatuation, she thinks. To want to tell someone about mundane things. The awareness of another person suddenly sharpens your senses, so that the little things come into focus and the world seems more beautiful and complicated.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“So ... I'm larking through the Baby Gap, looking at tiny capri pants and sweaters that cost more than ... I don't know, more than they should. And I get totally sucked in by this ridiculous, tiny fur coat. The kind of coat a baby might need to go to the ballet. In Moscow. In 1918. To match her tiny pearls.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Attachments

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something.”
― Neil Gaiman

“And you look like a protagonist...You look like the person who wins in the end”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“One day I looked at Gat, lying in the Clairmont hammock with a book, and he seemed, well, like he was mine. Like he was my particular person.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“The words you can't find, you borrow.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“The moment you killed something – a living creature or a false hope – was the moment you came of age. Loss of innocence wasn’t a passive experience that happened to you. It was something you gave up.”
― Jennifer Miller, The Year of the Gadfly: A Novel

“It didn’t matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“He'd been right about the world, but he was wrong about himself. The word was a desert, but he was a magician, and to be a magician was to be a secret spring - a moving oasis. He wasn't desolate, and he wasn't empty. He was full of emotion, full of feelings, bursting with them, and when it came down to it, that's what being a magician was. They weren't ordinary feelings - they weren't the tame, domesticated kind. Magic was wild feelings, the kind that escaped out of you and into the world and changed things. There was a lot of skill to it, and a lot of learning, and a lot of work, but that was where the power began: the power to enchant the world.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance.”
― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

“This was one of the little ways in which he said sorry. They were meant to add up each day.”
― Zadie Smith, On Beauty

“Everybody comes to the library naked. That's why they come here - to dress themselves in books.”
― Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society

“Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane--in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath--she had probably put herself in unnecessary danger.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“It was right and wrong both. Love does as it undoes. It goes after, with equal tenacity, joy and heartbreak.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I had a dream I put my hands inside my chest and held my heart to try to keep it still.”
― Mariko Tamaki, Skim

“I thought research would be more glamorous, somehow. I'd give the librarian a secret code word and he'd give me the one book I needed and whisper the necessary page numbers. Like a speakeasy. With books.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“There is no greater power on this earth than story.” Will paced the length of the room. “People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.” Will grabbed the sheaf of newspaper clippings he kept in a stack on his desk. “This, and these”—he gestured to the library’s teeming shelves—“they’re a testament to the country’s rich supernatural history.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Beyond the edge of the world there’s a space where emptiness and substance neatly overlap, where past and future form a continuous, endless loop. And, hovering about, there are signs no one has ever read, chords no one has ever heard.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Believing takes practice.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms. And the tribe of cartoonists. And the tribe of chronic masturbators. And the tribe of teenage boys. And the tribe of small-town kids. And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners. And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers. And the tribe of poverty. And the tribe of funeral-goers. And the tribe of beloved sons. And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends. It was a huge realization. And that's when I knew that I was going to be okay.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“For although Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were about to experience events that would be both exciting and memorable, they would not be exciting and memorable like having your fortune told or going to a rodeo. Their adventure would be exciting and memorable like being chased by a werewolf through a field of thorny bushes at midnight with nobody around to help you.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“The good people who are publishing this book have a concern that they have expressed to me. The concern is that readers like yourself will read my history of the Baudelaire orphans and attempt to imitate some of the things they do. So at this point in the story, in order to mollify the publishers - the word 'mollify' here means 'get them to stop tearing their hair out in worry' - please allow me to give you a piece of advice, even though I don't know anything about you. The piece of advice is as follows: If you ever need to get to Curdled Cave in a hurry, do not, under any circumstances, steal a boat and attempt to sail across Lake Lachrymose during a hurricane, because it is very dangerous and the chance of your survival are practically zero.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window