Mariam Al Maghrebi > Mariam's Quotes

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
― Sir Francis Bacon

“Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“So what? All writers are lunatics!”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkspell

“If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“Each moment is a place
you've never been.”
― Mark Strand, New Selected Poems

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have is...now.”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“These wrinkles are nothing
These gray hairs are nothing,
This stomach which sags
with old food, these bruised
and swollen ankles,
my darkening brain,
they are nothing.
I am the same boy
my mother used to kiss.”
― Mark Strand

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin

“I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“What do you fear, lady?" [Aragorn] asked.
"A cage," [Éowyn] said. "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eyes of the people in this [hospital] corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him... there is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He will forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need. I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is.”
― Khaled Hosseini

“I've always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they'd still say I'm a dark personality.”
― Tim Burton

“Contradict yourself. In order to live, you must remain broken up.”
― Wyndham Lewis

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
― Ray Bradbury

“People are curious. A few people are. ... They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.”
― Alice Munro, Friend of My Youth

“I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money - I think that can be a burden - I’m greedy for an exciting life.”
― David Hockney

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.”
― O. Henry

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Meet me where the sky touches the sea. Wait for me where the world begins.”
― Jennifer Donnelly

“I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.”
― Angela Carter

“I am entirely alone. I and my shadow fill the universe.”
― Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman