Emma > Emma's Quotes

“Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you'd be able to find whatever you were looking for.”
― Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck

“Cyril Connolly, twentieth-century writer and critic, wrote that ‘words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.’ That was how I wanted to use books: as an escape back to life. I wanted to engulf myself in books and come up whole again.
p.20”
― Nina Sankovitch, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading

“We become our decisions over time. We choose to love, or we can choose to hate. We can choose to forgive, or we can choose to take revenge; to have hope, or we can choose to fall into despair. But, regardless, we become our choices we make over time." p. 318”
― David LeRoy, The Siren of Paris

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
― Edward Abbey

“Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.”
― Edward Abbey

“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 words you can’t find, you borrow.
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
We are not quite novels.
The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.
In the end, we are collected works.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“Sometimes books don't find us until the right time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“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

“Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That's basically the highest compliment I can give.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“A place ain’t a place without a bookstore,”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

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

“When I read a book, I want you to be reading it at the same time. I want to know what would Amelia think of it. I want you to be mine. I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart, Amy.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“The words you can't find, you borrow.
We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“No Man Is An Island; Every Book Is A World.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“His heart is too full, and no words to release it.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“I found that reading gave me a certain relief – one form of escapism that seemed safe, and maybe more than safe. I felt saner – less fragmented- after reading for an hour.
location 3234”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“The secretary of education recently unveiled an initiative for curriculums to place more emphasis on history and language. Within the decade, proficiency in at least three languages will be required of all American schoolchildren by graduation. And along with its other recommendations, the CDC has issued a promulgation that every U.S. citizen “unplug” for at least two hours each day.
location 6374”
― Alena Graedon, The Word Exchange

“I was with book, as a woman is with child.”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“I said not long before that work and weakness are comforters. But sweat is the kindest creature of the three--far better than philosophy, as a cure for ill thoughts.”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Have you forgotten what we are to say to ourselves every morning? 'Today I shall meet cruel men, cowards and liars, the envious and the drunken. They will be like that because they do not know what is good from what is bad. This is an evil which has fallen upon them not upon me. They are to be pitied, not...”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Of the things that followed I cannot at all say whether they were what men call real or what men call dream. And for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream. But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, and things that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth.”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

“Alongside the favored palazzos lurked their dark, ignored sisters, the city’s abandoned children, tilting into muddy solitude from which they could never be extracted.”
― Christine Evelyn Volker, Venetian Blood: Murder in a Sensuous City