Beth > Beth's Quotes

“Fairy tales make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. a”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
― Philip Pullman

“He grunted; she recognized it as relief that she wasn't going to nag him further about Tor the Just, who probably wasn't that boring if he could hold off the Notherners for nine days and melt a hole in the hills.”
― Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword

“He will grow up into one of those people who lean back to smile and jump so easily it looks like slow motion and steer cars with their knees and snitch roses from gardens to give to girls and write with their left hand and own two pairs of jeans and one jacket and fall in love from such a height and so hard and so completely that they never quite recover from the drop.

But at least he will have me to look out for him.”
― Hilary McKay, Forever Rose

“Once, when Tom was over here, to tease Rose, I asked him, "Before she was born, can you remember? Were things just the same as they are these days? Did it still rain and get dark and all the stuff it does now? Did the sun go up and down in exactly the same way?"

Yes," Tom said, and then he smiled at Rose and said, "No. Not really. Not exactly the same way.”
― Hilary McKay

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.”
― Markus Zusak

“At least I was true. My intellectual abilities gave me a release, and an excuse. I shunned company because I preferred books; and the dreams I confided to my father were of becoming a scholar in good earnest, and going to University. It was unheard-of several shocked governesses were only too quick to tell me, when I spoke a little too boldly -- but my father nodded and smiled and said, 'We'll see.' Since I believed my father could do anything -- except of course make me pretty -- I worked and studied with passionate dedication, lived in hope, and avoided society and mirrors.”
― Robin McKinley, Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast

“There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.”
― Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Velvet Room

“Belief in mysteries—all manner of mysteries—is the only lasting luxury in life.”
― Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Witches of Worm

“A compass doesn’t tell you where you are, and it doesn’t tell you where you have to go. It can only point you in a direction. It’s up to you to always find your true north.”
― Samira Ahmed, Internment