Msjess > Msjess's Quotes

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself”
― George Orwell, 1984

“... you should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake' ...”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Truth, justice...I always thought they were absolutes, like God. And Mom. And apple pie.
But you could make apple pie from Ritz crackers. You could make cakes without sugar. We learned how to fake things, during the war.”
― Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied

“He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"

He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“My imagination longs to dash ahead and plan developments; but I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“I am heartbroken, but I have been heartbroken before, and this might be the best for which I can hope.”
― Lemony Snicket, The End

“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“If you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do - the best ones. The ones who rise up and say "I know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come." Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“What greater happiness is there than the privilege of being bored together?”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife

“She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife

“...if it's great reverence you're looking for, or earnest expressions of gratitude - well, then you don't work with kids.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife

“We are respecting our parents' wishes....They didn't want to shelter us from the world's treacheries. They wanted us to survive them.”
― Lemony Snicket, The End

“All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk.”
― Lemony Snicket

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
― E.E. Cummings

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”
― Maya Angelou

“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature's laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping it's dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.”
― Tupac Shakur, The Rose That Grew From Concrete

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she lacked the courage to be otherwise.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

“For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver