Lori > Lori's Quotes

“Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away.”
― Paul Terry

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”
― Billy Sunday, "Billy" Sunday, the man and his message: with his own words which have won thousands for Christ

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“The dead can survive as part of the lives of those that still live.”
― Kenzaburō Ōe, Hiroshima Notes

“I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded—and how pitiful that was.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Humor was an antiseptic that cleaned the deepest of personal wounds.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“I used to sleep with my books in piles all over my bed and sometimes they were the only thing keeping me warm and always the only thing keeping me alive. Books are the best and worst defense.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“At what point do we just re-create the people who have disappeared from our lives?”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“Everyone wanted to call her sweetheart. But she only danced for me. That’s how it was. She told me that every other step was just for me.” “But that’s only half of the dance,” I said. “Yeah,” my father said. “She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain’t healthy.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“And I laughed because half of me was happy and half of me wasn't sure what else to do.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“People can do things completely against their nature, completely. It’s like some tiny earthquake comes roaring through your body and soul, and it’s the only earthquake you’ll ever feel. But it damages so much, cracks the foundations of your life forever.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“Survival = Anger × Imagination. Imagination is the only weapon on the reservation.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“It’s hard to be optimistic on the reservation. When a glass sits on a table here, people don’t wonder if it’s half filled or half empty. They just hope it’s good beer. Still, Indians have a way of surviving. But it’s almost like Indians can easily survive the big stuff. Mass murder, loss of language and land rights. It’s the small things that hurt the most. The white waitress who wouldn’t take an order, Tonto, the Washington Redskins.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“Ya=hey," he called out to the movement of air, the unseen. A summer before, Uncle Moses listened to his nephew John-John talking a story. John-John was back from college and told Moses that 99 percent of the matter in the universe is invisible to the human eye. Ever since, Moses made sure to greet what he could not see.”
― Sherman Alexie

“Be Still, be still, she would say between her teeth, but Arnold loved his body too much to remain still.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“It is warm, soon to be cold, but that's in the future, maybe tomorrow, probably the next day and all the days after that. Today, now, I drink what I have, will eat what is left in the cupboard, while my mother finishes her quilt, piece by piece.
Believe me, there is just barely enough goodness in all of this.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

“It is lucky, she thinks, that we don’t feel all the love inside us every moment.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Hole We're In

“It is lucky, she thinks, that we don’t feel all the love inside us every moment. We couldn’t breathe or walk or eat. It is lucky that it just flares up every now and again then resolves itself into a manageable dormancy.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Hole We're In

“recognise him as a person who is lonely as opposed to solitary, who did not choose to be on his own but involuntarily lost people until he was.”
― Sara Baume, Spill Simmer Falter Wither

“I realise that you were not born with a predetermined capacity for wonder, as I’d believed. I realise that you fed it up yourself from tiny pieces of the world. I realise it’s up to me to follow your example and nurture my own wonder, morsel by morsel by morsel.”
― Sara Baume, Spill Simmer Falter Wither

“See the bird walk, the information board, the noble fir in all its hollow frippery. See the takeaway, the chip shop. The pub, the other pub. The grocer’s and the hairdressing salon, all shut. See the community we were insidiously hounded from. See how community is only a good thing when you’re a part of it.”
― Sara Baume, Spill Simmer Falter Wither

“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