Brooke > Brooke's Quotes

“The human life cycle no less than evolves around the box; from the open-topped box called a bassinet, to the pine box we call a coffin, the box is our past and, just as assuredly, our future. It should not surprise us then that the lowly box plays such a significant role in the first Christmas story. For Christmas began in a humble, hay-filled box of splintered wood. The Magi, wise men who had traveled far to see the infant king, laid treasure-filled boxes at the feet of that holy child. And in the end, when He had ransomed our sins with His blood, the Lord of Christmas was laid down in a box of stone. How fitting that each Christmas season brightly wrapped boxes skirt the pine boughs of Christmas trees around the world. ”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Christmas Box

“You must learn to know the difference between tales and the truth, my Liza, she would say. Fairy tales have a habit of ending too soon. They never show what happens afterwards when the prince and princess ride off the page.”
― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

“If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”
― Noel Langley, The Wizard of Oz Screenplay

“Life is the most spectacular show on earth ♥”
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“Ever try to hold a butterfly? It can't be done. You damage them," he said. 'As gentle as you try to be, you take the powder from their wings and they won't ever fly the same. It's kinder to let them go.”
― Susanna Kearsley, The Rose Garden

“I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood: and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago: and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“And then I feel as if I'm witnessing a miracle, as ever so slowly she raises her face towards the moon. I watch her drink in the sight, sensing the flood of memories she's unleashed and wanting nothing more than to let her know I'm here. But instead I stay where I am and stare up at the moon as well. And for the briefest instant, it almost feels like we're together again.”
― Nicholas Sparks, Dear John

“Shh," he said. "Look."
"Where?"
"Can't you see'um?" he whispered. "All the Terabithians standing on tiptoe to see you."
"Me?"
"Shh, yes. There's a rumor going around that the beautiful girl arrving today might be the queen they've been waiting for.”
― Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“Don't drop him," said Peter's mother to his father. "Don't you dare drop him." She was laughing.

"I will not," said his father. "I could not." For he is Peter Augustus Duchene, and he will always return to me.

Again and again, Peter's father threw him up in the air. Again and again, Peter felt himself suspended in nothingness for a moment, just a moment, and then he was pulled back, returned to the sweetness of the earth and the warmth of his father's waiting arms.

"See?" said his father to his mother. "Do you see how he always comes back to me?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“...falling in love could be achieved in a single word—a glance.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“They moved together, blue diamonds on a green field.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel's tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly.
"You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

“I don't know if mama was right, that we each have a destiny, or if if was Lt Dan, that we are all just floating around, accidental, like on a breeze, but I think... I think... maybe... it's both happening at the same time.”
― Winston Groom, Forrest Gump

“Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“Would you favor me with a dance?" Over all the others I was his choice! I curtsied, and he took my hand. Our hands knew each other. Char looked at me, startled. "Have we met before, Lady?”
― Gail Carson Levine, Ella Enchanted

“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“It was like meeting someone out of your dreams, or fantasies, or a beloved character from a favorite book.”
― James Patterson, Sundays at Tiffany's

“As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.”
― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“What is childlike humility? It’s not the lack of intelligence, but the lack of guile. The lack of an agenda. It’s that precious, fleeting time before we have accumulated enough pride or position to care what other people might think. The same un-self-conscious honesty that enables a three-year-old to splash joyfully in a rain puddle, or tumble laughing in the grass with a puppy, or point out loudly that you have a booger hanging out of your nose, is what is required to enter heaven. It is the opposite of ignorance—it is intellectual honesty: to be willing to accept reality and to call things what they are even when it is hard.”
― Todd Burpo, Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

“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