Matthew > Matthew's Quotes

“and I tell her she can still love this flawed thing. I tell her it will be a different love, a little sadder maybe, but wiser, too. I tell her that if we can’t love flawed things, we probably wouldn’t love anything at all.”
― David Arnold, The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik

“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.”
― Frederick Buechner

“I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.”
― Flannery O'Conner

“But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“That the battles are usually in her head does not lessen the bravery of it. The hardest ones always are.”
― William Ritter, Jackaby

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

“Hate ricochets, but kindness does too.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“Because people heal a whole lot faster when they're with someone who loves them”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“When King Lear dies in act five, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He has written, 'He dies.' No more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential piece of dramatic literature is, 'He dies.' Now I am not asking you to be happy at my leaving but all I ask you to do is to turn the page and let the next story begin.
-- Mr. Magorium”
― Suzanne Weyn, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

“When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He's written "He dies." That's all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential work of dramatic literature is "He dies." It takes Shakespeare, a genius, to come up with "He dies." And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it's only natural to be sad, but not because of the words "He dies." but because of the life we saw prior to the words.”
― Suzanne Weyn, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium

“The typical question is, Is this bad enough for me to have to change?

The question we should be asking is, Is this good enough for me to stay the same?

And the real question underneath it all is, Am I free?”
― Laura McKowen, We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life

“Come in by the gold gates or not at all,
Take of my fruit for others or forbear,
For those who steal or those who climb my wall
Shall find their heart’s desire and find despair.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)