Robert Teeter > Robert's Quotes

“Janet! Donkeys!”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“In previous years, they might have spent hours in the cellar, on their feet, never seeing the time go by nor feeling their legs, and they would go back upstairs at closing time enthralled, radiant, a bit drunk, and there were more and more of them who, when they got back to Paris or Basel, would tell those around them, 'I only ever buy my books in Meribel now, once a year; obviously I've had to change my suitcase (my car / my leisure time / my life)' . . . .”
― Laurence Cossé, A Novel Bookstore

“You have just confirmed to me that one of the most fortunate purposes of literature is to bring like-minded people together and get them talking.”
― Laurence Cossé, A Novel Bookstore

“Van, The Good Novel will not be an ordinary bookstore. That's our challenge. Our customers won't be ordinary customers. The people we'll see in our store will be people who never buy a book because it just came out, unless they adore the author already, but for other reasons that have nothing to do with its pub date, because they couldn't case less about that. . . .”
― Laurence Cossé, A Novel Bookstore

“My father says that believing or not believing doesn't matter; what is important is speaking with God.”
― Marjorie Agosín, A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile

“That debauchery was not a good thing in a married man did not even occur to him [Tsar Nicholas I], and he would have been very surprised if anyone had condemned him for it. But, even though he was convinced that he had acted as he ought, he was left with some sort of unpleasant aftertaste, and, to stifle that feeling, he began thinking about something that always soothed him: about what a great man he was.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“Yes, what would Russia be without me?" he [Tsar Nicholas I] said to himself, again sensing the approach of the unpleasant feeling. "Yes, what would, not just Russia, but Europe be without me?" And he remembered his brother-in-law, the king of Prussia, and his weakness and stupidity and shook his head.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“Elena Pavlovna was for him [Tsar Nicholas I] the personification of those empty people who talked not only about science and poetry, but also about governing people, imagining that they could govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, governed them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“This praise of his strategic abilities was especially pleasing to [Tsar] Nicholas, because, though he was proud of his strategic abilities, at the bottom of his heart he was aware that he had none. And now he wanted to to hear more detailed praise of himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“The constant, obvious flattery, contrary to all evidence, of the people around him [Tsar Nicholas I] had brought him to the point that he no longer saw his contradictions, no longer conformed his actions and words to reality, logic, or even simple common sense, but was fully convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and inconsistent with each other, became sensible, just, and consistent with each other only because he gave them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“He [Tsar Nicholas I] had done much evil to the Poles. To explain that evil he had to be convinced that all Poles were scoundrels. And Nicholas regarded them as such and hated them in proportion to the evil he had done them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“The deep Chile of the fascists had always been there, beneath the surface, just waiting to emerge. It was the triumph of the arrogant Right, the defeat of the people who believed in that utopian revolution.”
― Isabel Allende, A Long Petal of the Sea

“Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.”
― Amos Oz

“Teenagers and truck drivers: We're all on our way to somewhere else.”
― Phuc Tran, Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In

“None of the bookstores or libraries he'd visit are open, so that knocks out three-quarters of his life right there.”
― Brandy Colbert, Little & Lion