K > K's Quotes

“[…]when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in reading that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book becomes one of a million different books[…]”
― Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

“The job of an educator is to teach students to see vitality in themselves”
― Joseph Campbell

“Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.”
― William Faulkner

“The best way to learn about books, ... is to spend time with them, talk about them, defend them.”
― Charlie Lovett, The Bookman’s Tale

“We are not quite novels.
We are not quite short stories.
In the end, we are collected works.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults.”
― William Faulkner

“If a thing loves, it is infinite.”
― William Blake

“The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.”
― William Blake

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Readers don’t work for writers. They work for themselves.”
― Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

“Do you know that it is in your company that I have had my finest thoughts?”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“Beautiful things should belong to beautiful souls.”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

“Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”
― Neil Gaiman, M Is for Magic

“Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices, or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their song instead.”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“I trail my fingers across his cheek. He stays perfectly still for me. “Please stop apologizing, Étienne.”
“Say my name again,” he whispers.
I close my eyes and lean forward. “Étienne.”
He takes my hands into his.Those perfect hands, that fit mine just so. “Anna?”
Our foreheads touch. “Yes?”
“Will you please tell me you love me? I’m dying here.”
And then we’re laughing. And then I’m in his arms, and we’re kissing, at first quickly—to make up for lost time—and then slowly, because we have all
the time in the world. And his lips are soft and honey sweet, and the careful, passionate way he moves them against my own says that he savors the way I
taste, too.
And in between kisses, I tell him I love him.
Again and again and again.”
― Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

“They say, Find a purpose in your life and live it. But, sometimes, it is only after you have lived that you recognize your life had a purpose, and likely one you never had in mind.”
― Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

“I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.”
― Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

“Out beyond ideas
of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.”
― Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

“A story is like a moving train: no matter where you hop onboard, you are bound to reach your destination sooner or later.”
― Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed

“To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I renamed myself Ari.

If I switched the letter, my name was Air.

I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.

I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Why do we smile? Why do we laugh? Why do we feel alone? Why are we sad and confused? Why do we read poetry? Why do we cry when we see a painting? Why is there a riot in the heart when we love? Why do we feel shame? What is that thing in the pit of your stomach called desire?”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“We need never be without hope because we can never be irreparably broken.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“And the world goes on regardless of joy or despair or one woman's fortune or one man's loss. And we can't know the lives of others. And we can't know our own lives beyond the details we can manage. And the things that change us forever happen without us knowing they would happen. And the moment that looks like the rest is the one where hearts are broken or healed. And time that runs so steady and sure runs wild outside the clocks. It takes so little time to change a lifetime and it takes a lifetime to understand the change.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The Gap of Time

“I would have come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that's what we do. We never stop fighting.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom