Andi > Andi's Quotes

“People really are like house with vast rooms and tiny windows. And maybe it's a good thing, the way we never stop surprising each other.”
― Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

“It's a strange sensation to live inside another person's life, to wonder all the time what he is doing, or thinking or feeling.”
― Meg Rosoff, What I Was

“It's not that he lacked poetry. But his poetry was of the body, not the mind. He spoke it in the way he moved, the way he held a hammer, rowed a boat, built a fire. I, on the other hand, was like a brain in a box, a beating heart in a coal scuttle. ”
― Meg Rosoff, What I Was

“I studied Finn the way another boy might have studied history, determined to memorize his vocabulary, his movements, his clothes, what he said, what he did, what he thought. What ideas circulated in his head when he looked distracted? What did he dream about?

But most of all what I wanted was to see myself through his eyes, to define myself in relation to him, to sift out what was interesting in me (what he must have liked, however insignificant) and distill it into a purer, bolder, more compelling version of myself.

The truth is, for that brief period of my life I failed to exist if Finn wasn't looking at me. And so I copied him, strove to exist the way he existed: to stretch, languid and graceful when tired, to move swiftly and with determination when not, to speak rarely and with force, to smile in a way that rewarded the world.”
― Meg Rosoff, What I Was

“A complex contract was in the process or being forged, whereby Finn agreed to tolerate me presence and I agreed to worship him- totally, but carefully, so not as to destroy the fragile equilibrium of his life.”
― Meg Rosoff, What I Was

“People around here didn't waste words; language was a tool, not a treat. You didn't roll it around on your tongue, revel in it.”
― Meg Rosoff, What I Was

“I have often looked back at that moment and imagined history veering fractionally in one direction or another, imagined if I'd been a different person, or if he had, whether what followed would have been a different story altogether and the history of the world might have changed ever so slightly around us.”
― Meg Rosoff, What I Was

“My fortune seemed to obvious to be predicting. Finn's fortune would have been more interesting; I couldn't imagine how he would be anything but sixteen, anywhere but in that hut by the sea, his face and limbs any more or less graceful than they were now. It was like imagining a future for Peter Pan.”
― Meg Rosoff, What I Was

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“...this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“You will hold this book in your hands, and learn all the things that I learned, right along with me:
There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care. All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. It takes forty-one seconds to climb a ladder three stories tall. It’s not easy to imagine the year 3012, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. We have new capabilities now—strange powers we’re still getting used to. The mountains are a message from Aldrag the Wyrm-Father. Your life must be an open city, with all sorts of ways to wander in.
After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonley street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“The nature of immortality is a mystery,' he says, speaking so softly that we have to lean closer to hear.' But everything I know of writing and reading tells me that this is true. I have felt it in these shelves and in others.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“People want things to be real. If you give them an excuse, they'll believe you.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“Turning the pages of this encoded codex, I realize that the books I love most are like open cities, with all sorts of ways to wander in. This thing is a fortress with no front gate. You're meant to scale the walls, stone by stone.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“Hello, nice to meet you, I sell unreadable books to weird old people - want to get dinner?”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“Everyone loves a conspiracy.”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“Joey loved it here,” he said. “Loved it. This place gave him something sacred. Gave his mind some quiet. This was his Thanksgiving table. His couch-cushion fort. He could get lost in here like nowhere else on earth. I’m telling you this, Lydia, because in all his life, he’d never really had that feeling before, not consistently anyway. Not to overstate it, but this store was the closest thing to a home that Joey ever had.”
― Matthew J. Sullivan, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

“To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Strange, isn’t it? To love a book. When the words on the pages become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are. It’s nice to finally have someone read stories I know so intimately.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“There’s no reason, on paper at least, why I need these pills to get through life. I had a great childhood, loving parents, the whole package. I wasn’t beaten, abused, or expected to get nothing but As. I had nothing but love and support, but that wasn’t enough somehow. My friend Erin says we all have demons inside us, voices that whisper we’re no good, that if we don’t make this promotion or ace that exam we’ll reveal to the world exactly what kind of worthless sacks of skin and sinew we really are. Maybe that’s true. Maybe mine just have louder voices. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. The depression I fell into after university wasn’t about exams and self-worth, it was something stranger, more chemical, something that no talking cure was going to fix. Cognitive behavioral therapy, counseling, psychotherapy—none of it really worked in the way that the pills did. Lissie says she finds the notion of chemically rebalancing your mood scary, she says it’s the idea of taking something that could alter how she really is. But I don’t see it that way; for me it’s like wearing makeup—not a disguise, but a way of making myself more how I really am, less raw. The best me I can be.”
― Ruth Ware, The Woman in Cabin 10

“I am but paper. Brittle and thin. I am held up to the sun, and it shines right through me. I get written on, and I can never be used again. These scratches are a history. They’re a story. They tell things for others to read, but they only see the words, and not what the words are written upon. I am but paper, and though there are many like me, none are exactly the same. I am parched parchment. I have lines. I have holes. Get me wet, and I melt. Light me on fire, and I burn. Take me in hardened hands, and I crumple. I tear. I am but paper. Brittle and thin.”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“If Vengeance has a mother, her name is Patience.”
― Jay Kristoff, Godsgrave

“Conquer your fear, and you can conquer the world.”
― Jay Kristoff, Godsgrave

“The witch is the ultimate feminist icon because she is a fully rounded symbol of female oppression and liberation.”
― Pam Grossman, Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power