JG (Introverted Reader) > JG (Introverted Reader)'s Quotes

“I know it is a bad thing to break a promise, but I think now that it is a worse thing to let a promise break you.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, A Northern Light

“Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White

“My father had put these things on the table.

I looked at him standing by the sink. He was washing his hands, splashing water on his face. My mamma left us. My brother, too. And now my feckless, reckless uncle had as well. My pa stayed, though. My pa always stayed.

I looked at him. And saw the sweat stains on his shirt. And his big, scarred hands. And his dirty, weary face. I remembered how, lying in my bed a few nights before, I had looked forward to showing him my uncle's money. To telling him I was leaving.

And I was so ashamed.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, A Northern Light

“[She] knew that it was not precisely a body that one loved. One loved the man who shone out through the eyes and used its mouth to smile and speak.”
― Louis de Bernières, Corelli’s Mandolin

“He showed his daughter how to use cushions to vary his position and relieve the monotony of pressure that corrupts the flesh, but he made her leave the room for all those tasks which would normally fall to the lot of a woman, and which show the greatest love.”
― Louis de Bernières, Corelli’s Mandolin

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with an evil thought, suffering follows him as the wheel follows the hoof of the beast that draws the wagon.... If a man speak or act with a good thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.”
― Gautama Buddha

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“What is love? two souls and one flesh; friendship? two bodies and one soul.”
― Joseph Roux

“Let men say what'er they will
Woman, woman, rules them still.”
― Isaac Bickerstaff

“You may tire of reality but you never tire of dreams.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Road to Yesterday

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“Man has his will, but woman has her way.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Wherever and however any one of us may be conceived, it is the same. We come into being in the arms of God.”
― Robert Fulghum, Maybe, Maybe Not

“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into the nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.”
― Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

“The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.”
― Thomas Macaulay

“When Mama starts to move across a room, people pay attention. You can never be sure she's not going to grab you by the top of the head to steady herself. And she's pretty free with that walking stick, too.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“It was no mean trick doing the wiring with those mittens on. But I managed it and crawled out, batting spiders into the shadows. I could hear a thud as they hit the floor joists, then a scuttling sound, then, worst of all, the silence of spiders.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“We settled Mama into the wheelchair and loaded her down with both our pocketbooks and a vase of flowers I had picked to present to our host in hopes of softening the effects of any opinions Mama might vent during the evening.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“Her blood-curdling snoring, with its gargling and squawking and its terrifying pauses is like the sound the devil might make if he were alternately relishing and strangling on a pound of human flesh.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“When I got started again, I drove slower and felt smaller. I think it does us all good to get looked at like that now and then by a wild animal.”
― Bailey White, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living

“If you're brave enough to try, you might be able to catch a train from UnLondon to Parisn't, or No York, or Helsunki, or Lost Angeles, or Sans Francisco, or Hong Gone, or Romeless.”
― China Miéville, Un Lun Dun

“It had become a chimney poking from a vertical universe of bookshelves.

There was motion below her. There were people on the shelves.

They clung to the edges of the cases and moved across them in expert scuttles. They wore ropes and hooks and carried picks on which they sometimes hung. Dangling from straps they carried notebooks, pens, magnifying glasses, ink pads, and stamps.

The men and women took books from the shelves as they went, checked their details, leaning against their ropes, replaced them, pulled out little pads and made notes, sometimes carried the books with them to another place and reshelved it there.

...

I'm Margarita Staples." She bowed in her harness. 'Extreme librarian. Bookaneer.”
― China Miéville

“Never, ever ask a former clergyman to say the blessing over a holiday dinner. Not if you like your dinner warm, anyway.”
― Mary Kay Andrews, Blue Christmas

“I spent my entire life waiting for you, Marianne, and I didn't even know it until you arrived. Being burned was the best thing that ever happened to me because it brought you. I wanted to die but you filled me with so much love that it overflowed and I couldn't help but love you back. It happened before I even knew it and now I can't imagine not loving you. You have said that it takes so much for me to believe anything, but I do believe. I believe in your love for me. I believe in my love for you. I believe that every remaining beat of my heart belongs to you, and I believe that when I finally leave this world, my last breath will carry your name. I believe that my final word--Marianne--will be all I need to know that my life was good and full and worthy, and I believe that our love will last forever.”
― Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle

“If you listen to the wind very carefully, you'll be able to hear me whisper my love for you.”
― Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle

“I once knew a woman who liked to imagine Love in the guise of a sturdy dog, one that would always chase down the stick after it was thrown and return with his ears flopping around happily. Completely loyal, completely unconditional. And I laughed at her, because even I knew that love is not like that. Love is a delicate thing that needs to be cosseted and protected. Love is not robust and love is not unyeilding. Love can crumble under a few harsh words, or be tossed away with a handful of careless actions. Love isn't a steadfast dog at all; love is more like a pygmy mouse lemur. ”
― Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle

“Love is an action you must repeat ceaselessly.”
― Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle

“Mom, how do you know if the guy is the guy?”

You mean if he’ll be a good husband?” She pauses, then says “The ticket is for the man to love the woman more than she loves him.”

Shouldn’t it be equal?”

Mom cackles. “It can never be equal.”

But what if the woman loves the man more?”

A life of hell awaits her. As women, the deck is stacked against us because time is our enemy. We age, while men season. And trust me, there are plenty of women out there looking for a man, and they don’t mind staking a claim on somebody else’s husband, no matter how old, creaky, and deaf they are.”
― Adriana Trigiani, Very Valentine

“The strange thing was, he wanted to like everyone. He just couldn't find a way to do it.”
― David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars