Robin > Robin's Quotes

“Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace.”
― Milan Kundera

“I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of the writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

“Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up.”
― Dag Hammarskjold

“Better than other people.' Sometimes he says: 'That, at least, you are.' But more often: 'Why should you be? Either you are what you can be, or you are not - like other people.”
― Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

“Never confuse faith, or belief—of any kind—with something even remotely intellectual.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Life forces enough final decisions on us. We should have the sense to avoid as many of the unnecessary ones as we can.”
― John Irving, Until I Find You

“Dreaming her way backward in time, resurrecting images, the young girl realized, with wonder, that the absent are always present, that you don't make them go away simply because you get on a train and head off in a particular direction.”
― Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

“We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so...”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“These days, Clarissa believes, you measure people first by their kindness and their capacity for devotion. You get tired, sometimes, of wit and intellect; everybody's little display of genius.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours

“I remember one morning getting up at dawn. There was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling. And I... I remember thinking to myself: So this is the beginning of happiness, this is where it starts. And of course there will always be more...never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment, right then.”
― Michael Cunningham, The Hours