Wendy Dunn > Wendy's Quotes

“To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.”
― Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods

“Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“The Light in the Labyrinth is a beautifully written book, a gem. I savoured every word; words written with so much ‘colour’. Even though I know the story of Queen Anne Boleyn, Dunn’s perspective on her last days is missing in so many other books of the genre. Dunn gives grace to the history and an honest, and very compassionate look at Anne’s last days. I cried in the end, shedding tears for the young Kate, Anne and her little Bess. I have not yet read a Tudor book that has moved me to tears, as this wonderful journey does. Dunn’s dedication and research shines through in this unforgettable book, a book not just for young readers, but also for all.” — Lara Salzano, avid Tudor reader.”
― Wendy J. Dunn, The Light in the Labyrinth

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.”
― Steven Spielberg

“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You receive from the world what you give to the world.”
― Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul

“I don't think immediate tragedy is a very good source of art. It can be, but too often it's raw and painful and un-dealt-with. Sometimes art can be a really good escape from the intolerable, and a good place to go when things are bad, but that doesn't mean you have to write directly about the bad thing; sometimes you need to let time pass, and allow the thing that hurts to get covered with layers, and then you take it out, like a pearl, and you make art out of it.
When my father died, on the plane from his funeral in the UK back to New York, still in shock, I got out my notebook and wrote a script. It was a good place to go, the place that script was, and I went there so deeply and so far that when we landed Maddy had to tap me on the arm to remind me that I had to get off the plane now. (She says I looked up at her, puzzled, and said "But I want to find out what happens next.") It was where I went and what I did to cope, and I was amazed, some weeks later when I pulled out that notebook to start typing, to find that I'd written pretty much the entire script in that six hour journey.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Books are always obviously having conversations with other books, and some times they're amiable and sometimes not.”
― China Miéville, The City & the City

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
― C.S. Lewis

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
― C.S. Lewis

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

“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
― 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

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Heaven would never be heaven without you.”
― Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married.”
― Elizabeth I, Collected Works

“Break often - not like porcelain, but like waves.”
― Scherezade Siobhan

“Since fortune was dragging its heels, I would lure it out with my hard work.”
― C.W. Gortner, Mademoiselle Chanel

“What we do not earn ourselves,” he said, “is never truly ours. It can always be taken away. But even if we lose everything we work for, the achievement is ours forever.”
― C.W. Gortner, Mademoiselle Chanel

“The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today... The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow"
-- "Autobiography of an Historian", An Autobiography and Other Essays (1949).”
― G. M. Trevelyan

“In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”
― Gautama Buddha

“Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,

"You owe me."

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.”
― Hafiz

“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“A seed hidden in the heart of an apple is an orchard invisible.
~Welsh Proverb~”
― Elise McCune

“Terror made me cruel . . .”
― Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“A smile is the universal welcome.”
― Max Eastman, The Sense of Humor

“To write a novel is to dream a story and write it down on the page. That’s why the power of a really good story is one of true magic. Good stories engage the reader utterly in the writer’s dream so the dream becomes theirs, too.”
― Wendy J. Dunn