Amy > Amy's Quotes

“Dogs are always good and full of selfless love. They are undiluted vessels of joy who never, ever deserve anything bad that happens to them.”
― Steven Rowley, Lily and the Octopus

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“ah, life—
the thing
that happens
to us
while we’re off
somewhere else
blowing on
dandelions
& wishing
ourselves into
the pages of
our favorite
fairy tales.”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in This One

“repeat after me:
you owe
no one
your forgiveness.

- except maybe yourself.”
― Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in This One

“The very best thing about dogs is how they just know when you need them most, and they’ll drop everything that they’re doing to sit with you awhile. I”
― Steven Rowley, Lily and the Octopus

“Because dogs live in the present. Because dogs don’t hold grudges. Because dogs let go of all of their anger daily, hourly, and never let it fester. They absolve and forgive with each passing minute. Every turn of a corner is the opportunity for a clean slate. Every bounce of a ball brings joy and the promise of a fresh chase.”
― Steven Rowley, Lily and the Octopus

“The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”
― Elizabeth Taylor

“The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.”
― Henry Miller

“These woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”
― Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

“Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.”
― Clare Boothe Luce

“Living in that childish wonder is a most beautiful feeling - I can so well remember it. There was always something more - behind and beyond everything - to me, the golden spectacles were very, very big.”
― Kate Greenaway

“A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.”
― Phyllis McGinley

“I live for coincidences. They briefly give to me the illusion or the hope that there's a pattern to my life, and if there's a pattern, then maybe I'm moving toward some kind of destiny where it's all explained.”
― Jonathan Ames, My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays

“There is a sacredness in tears....They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”
― Washington Irving

“These are the things I learned (in Kindergarten):

1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don't hit people.
4. Put things back where you found them.
5. CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS.
6. Don't take things that aren't yours.
7. Say you're SORRY when you HURT somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life - learn some and drink some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
15. Goldfish and hamster and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
16. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.”
― Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”
― E.Y. Harburg

“I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.”
― Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone around the World

“Do you believe in fairies?...If you believe, clap your hands!”
― J.M. Barrie

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Perhaps we are born knowing the tales of our grandmothers and all their ancestral kin continually run in our blood repeating them endlessly, and the shock they give us when we first bear them is not of surprise but of recognition.”
― P.L. Travers, About the Sleeping Beauty

“It's like learning to ride a unicorn. You never forget.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Lost Princess of Oz

“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be.”
― John Cheever

“Remain true to yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Forest House

“Ursula craved solitude but she hated loneliness, a conundrum that she couldn’t even begin to solve.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King