Caro > Caro's Quotes

“He is thinking about asymmetry. This is a world, he is thinking, where you can lie in bed, listening to a song as you dream about someone you love, and your feelings and the music will resonate so powerfully and completely that it seems impossible that the beloved, whoever and wherever he or she might be, should not know, should not pick up this signal as it pulsates from your heart, as if you and the music and the love and the whole universe have merged into one force that can be chanelled out into the darkness to bring them this message. But, in actuality, not only will he or she not know, there is nothing to stop that other person from lying on his or her bed at the exact moment listening to the exact same song and thinking about someone else entirely-from aiming those identical feelings in some completely opposite direction, at some totally other person, who may in turn be lying in the dark thinking of another person still, a fourth, who is thinking of a fifth, and so on, and so on, so that rather than a universe of neatly reciprocating pairs, love and love-returned fluttering through space nicely and symmetrically like so many pairs of butterfly wings, instead we get chains of yearning, which sprawl and meander and culminate in an infinite number of dead ends.”
― Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

“I just want to break that song into pieces and love them all to death.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Ein funkelnagelneues Buch, das noch nach Druckerschwärze riecht. Ein Buch, mit dem man manchen kann, was man will, und das man, wenn man es ausgelesen hat, in den eigenen Bücherschrank stellt. Statt eines widerlichen, nach allem anderen als Druckerschwärze riechenden Exemplars mit einem hässlichen Bibliothekseinband. Ein Buch wie eine öffentliche Toilette, bei der man nicht weiß, wer vor einem auf der Klobrille gesessen hat.”
― Herman Koch, Dear Mr. M

“Ich bin dem Zufall dankbar. Ich kann mir die ganze Sucherei sparen, wie ich sie mir wahrscheinlich auch in einem Roman sparen würde. Genauso wie die Landschafts- und Gesichtsbeschreibungen. Bei einem Roman, einer erfundenen Geschichte, würden jetzt Leser bestimmt ausrufen, das sei doch ein bisschen zu viel Zufall. Manche würden jetzt vielleicht sogar passen.”
― Herman Koch, Dear Mr. M

“Vielleicht sollten wir den Begriff "Toleranz" neu definieren, denn was besagt er eigentlich? Dass man andere toleriert? Menschen mit anderer Hautfarbe, anderem Glauben, Menschen mit Piercings und Tätowierungen, Frauen mit Kopftuch und Menschen mit anderer sexueller Orientierung? Dabei gibt es doch gar nichts zu tolerieren. Schon indem man das Wort "Toleranz" bemüht, stellt man sich auf eine höhere Ebene als sie, die man toleriert. Toleranz beruht auf einem Überlegenheitsgefühl.”
― Herman Koch, Dear Mr. M

“Aber Film hin oder her, man sollte nie mit Fotos aus einem Film für einen Roman werben. Damit schränkt man die Fantasie des Lesers ein. Man zwingt ihn die Gesichter der Filmschauspieler vor sich zu sehen. Für den, der erst den Film gesehen hat und dann das Buch lesen möchte, macht das vielleicht nicht viel aus. Aber der, der erst das Buch gelesen hat, gerät in ein Dilemma.”
― Herman Koch, Dear Mr. M

“Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“The first time he'd held her hand, it felt so good that it crowded out all the bad things. It felt better than anything had ever hurt.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“If you can’t save your own life, is it even worth saving?”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“She wanted to lose herself in him. To tie his arms around her like a tourniquet.

If she showed him how much she needed him, he'd run away.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“The me that's me right now is yours. Always.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Life makes fools of all of us sooner or later. But keep your sense of humor and you'll at least be able to take your humiliations with some measure of grace. In the end, you know, its our own expectations that crush us.”
― Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

“To hear people talk, you would think no one ever did anything but love each other. But when you look for it, when you search out this love everyone is always talking about, it is nowhere to be found; and when someone looks for love from you, you find you are not able to give it, you are not able to hold the trust and dreams they want you to hold, any more than you could cradle water in your arms.”
― Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

“Es geht darum, dass [...] die Menschen immer irgendwohin gehen. Dass alle immer nicht da sein wollen, wo sie sind. [...] Oder dass sie anders sein wollen. [...] Sie sind so damit beschäftigt, irgendwo anders hinzukommen, dass sie gar nicht die Welt sehen, in der sie sind. [...] Statt nach Wegen aus unserem Leben heraus zu suchen, sollten wir lieber nach Wegen in das Leben hinein suchen.”
― Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

“Die Grundstruktur des Universums ist so beschaffen, dass sich die Dinge nie ausgleichen. Der Toast fällt mit der Butterseite auf den Boden. Intelligente Schüler werden gemobbt, statt dass man sie als die zukünftigen führenden Köpfe der Gesellschaft respektiert. Du kriegst nicht, was du willst, aber jemand anderes, der es gar nicht will, hat es in rauen Mengen. Asymmetrie. Wo man auch hinschaut.”
― Paul Murray, Skippy Dies

“This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even a stone can be worn down with enough rain.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“It's not the changes that will break your heart; it's that tug of familiarity.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

“I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I Wanna Hold Your Hand.’ First single. Fucking brilliant. Perhaps the most fucking brilliant song ever written. Because they nailed it. That’s what everyone wants. Not 24-7 hot wet sex. Not a marriage that lasts a hundred years. Not a Porsche or a blow job or a million-dollar crib. No. They wanna hold your hand. They have a feeling that they can’t hide.”
― Rachel Cohn, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I can't eat and I can't sleep. I'm not doing well in terms of being a functional human, you know?”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Life can't be cured, but it can be managed.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Everybody has problems. Some people just hide their crap better than others.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Who hasn't thought about killing themselves, as a kid? How can you grow up in this world and not think about it?”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands”
― E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems

“Ich bin nur entschlossen, im Interesse meines Glückes zu handeln, ohne Rücksicht auf Sie oder irgendjemanden, der ebenso wenig mit mir zu tun hat.”
― Jane Austen, Stolz und Vorurteil: Roman (Fischer Klassik Plus)

“The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and everyday confirms my belief of the inconsistencies of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice