A. > A.'s Quotes

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
― William Styron, Conversations with William Styron

“A fight like this was stunning, revealing not just how much he was on the lookout for enemies, but how she too was unable to abandon argument which escalated into rage. Neither of them would back off, they held bitterly to principles.

Can't you tolerate people being different, why is this so important?
If this isn't important, nothing is.

The air seemed to grow thick with loathing. All over a matter that could never be resolved. They went to bed speechless, parted speechless the next morning, and during the day were overtaken by fear - hers that he would never come home, his that when he did she would not be there. Their luck held, however. They came together in the late afternoon pale with contrition, shaking with love, like people who had narrowly escaped an earthquake and had been walking around in naked desolation.”
― Alice Munro, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories

“For the hour in which I am able to lose myself in someone else’s thoughts is the greatest relief I can find from the burden of my own memories.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders

“I OPEN THE DOOR to my cottage these evenings on a silence so thick it falls upon me like a blanket. Of all the lonely moments of my day, this one is always the loneliest. I confess I have sometimes been reduced to muttering my thoughts aloud like a mad-woman when the need for a human voice becomes too strong. I mislike this, for I fear the line between myself and madness is as fine these days as a cobweb, and I have seen what it means when a soul crosses over into that dim and wretched place. But I, who always prided myself on grace, now allow myself a deliberate clumsiness. I let my feet land heavily. I clatter the hearth tools. And when I draw water, I let the bucket chain grind on the stone, just to hear ragged noise instead of the smothering silence.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders

“I'm taking a fresh look at the American Dream and who gets to live it and who doesn't.”
― Helen Prejean, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey

“...there's no such thing as being apolitical. If we sit back and do nothing, leaving all the policy making to others, that is, in fact, a position of support for the status quo, which is a very political stance to take.”
― Helen Prejean, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey

“I guess when you're not awake, you're not awake. Waking up to the suffering of people who are different from us is a long process, and has a whole lot to do with what community we belong to and whose consciousness and life experiences impact our own on a daily basis. I have a hunch I'm going to be waking up until the moment I die.”
― Helen Prejean, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey

“And suddenly she was at him, after him with her fists, her struggling weight; he squeezed her against him, regretfully conscious even now, as her pinned fists flailed his shoulders and her face crumpled into contorted weeping and the sharp smell of perfume was scalded from her, that the expression, of serene superiority, of a beautiful secret continually tasted, was still on his face.”
― John Updike, Couples

“One of us was sleeping and I didn't know which one of us it was.”
― Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

“We were all so young, you know. We were still our best selves.”
― Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

“We could sit here all night talking about cancer. I'm just telling you it's unsettling. There are thousands of ways your body can go off the rails for no reason whatsoever and chances are you won't know about any of it until it's too late.”
― Ann Patchett, The Dutch House