1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
984
985
986
987
988
1384
2208
3346
3522
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 023cef4 | Summer came. For the book thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews. When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity's certain b.. | holocaust jews shower | Markus Zusak | |
| 4a2285d | I could introduce myself properly, but it's not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away. At that moment, you will be lying there (I rarely find people standing up). You will be .. | Markus Zusak | ||
| 59ff95d | It would have been better to do what everyone else does, neither taking life too seriously nor seeing it as merely grotesque, choosing a profession and practicing it, grabbing one's share of the common cake, eating it and saying, "It's delicious!" rather than following the gloomy path that I have trodden all alone; then I wouldn't be here writing this, or at least it would have been a different story. The further I proceed with it, the more.. | writing | Gustave Flaubert | |
| dd6ef8e | The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the pr.. | shame | George Eliot | |
| 02f767b | My belief is that if we live another century or so -- I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals -- and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in re.. | hope shakespeare-s-sister virginia-woolf | Virginia Woolf | |
| bafce09 | If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us? | romance | Virginia Woolf | |
| 06ef0fe | Finally, to hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language. English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache. It has all grown one way. The merest schoolgirl, when she falls in love, has Shakespeare or Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry... | Virginia Woolf | ||
| adbc400 | I ransack public libraries, and find them full of sunk treasure. | reading treasure | Virginia Woolf | |
| 965cdfa | Noi leggeveamo un giorno per diletto Di Lancialotto, come amor lo strinse; Soli eravamo e senza alcun sospetto Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse Quella lettura, e scolorocci il viso; Ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse. Quando leggemmo il disiato riso Esser baciato da cotanto amante, Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, La bocca mi bacio tutto tremante. Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse: Quel giorno piu non vi leggemmo avante." ""W.. | italian italy l-inferno | Dante Alighieri | |
| 261a958 | Maybe it was the same with people: if you studied them,you'd see new and different things. But would you like what you saw? Did it depend on who was doing the looking? | Sharon Creech | ||
| 35eec9d | I was doing something I'd never done before. And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today? | future | Elizabeth Gilbert | |
| 1af4231 | My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her peace. She did not cop out on herself. The benefits of her choices are massive-a long, stable marriage to a man she still calls her best friend; a family that has extended now into grandchildren who adore her; a certainty in her own strength. Maybe some things were sacrificed, and my dad made his sacrifices, too-but who amongst us lives with.. | Elizabeth Gilbert | ||
| e48ae01 | In Venice in the Middle Ages there was once a profession for a man called a codega--a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets. | protection thieves | Elizabeth Gilbert | |
| b14bb38 | Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don't you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching, I mean you got zapped, kiddo. But that love you felt, that's just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. That's just limited little rinky-dink mortal love. Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, Groceries--you have the capacity to someday lov.. | Elizabeth Gilbert | ||
| 0b8b218 | the great lack of parity between husbands and wives has always been spawned by the disproportionate degree of self-sacrifice that women are willing to make on behalf of those they love. | wives women | Elizabeth Gilbert | |
| 254b46f | Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. | Elizabeth Gilbert | ||
| 56f90c8 | creative entitlement simply means believing that you are allowed to be here, and that--merely by being here--you are allowed to have a voice and a vision of your own. | Elizabeth Gilbert | ||
| 5c1f182 | And then it went, and time passed properly once more, every second following every other second just like they're meant to. | Neil Gaiman | ||
| baf7f48 | He was alone in the darkness once more, but the darkness became brighter and brighter until it was burning like the sun. | Neil Gaiman | ||
| 13ec73d | The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them. | George Bernard Shaw | ||
| 3111d62 | I took the stool next to him, raising an eyebrow at the coffee and cruller on the counter. "Thought you weren't into internal pollution," I said. Lately Ranger'd been on a health food thing. "Props," Ranger told me. "Didn't want to look out of place." I didn't want to burst his fantasy bubble, but the only time Ranger wouldn't look out of place would be standing in a lineup between Rambo and Batman." | Janet Evanovich | ||
| 53a215f | every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. (p. 18) | homeland love-of-country origins | Alexander McCall Smith | |
| 7dd0271 | If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business. | humor love poisonwood-bible | Barbara Kingsolver | |
| 859da4b | please don't cook me, kind sirs! I am a good cook myself, and cook better than I cook, if you see what I mean. | J.R.R. Tolkien | ||
| eadda17 | And she looked at him and saw the grave tenderness in his eyes, and yet knew, for she was bred among men of war, that here was one whom no Rider of the Mark could outmatch in battle. | J.R.R. Tolkien | ||
| 3dce11c | All over America, people were pulling credentials out of their pockets and sticking them under someone else's nose to prove they had been somewhere or done something. And I thought someday everyone in America will suddenly jump up and say, 'I don't take any shit!' and start pushing and cursing and clawing at the man next to him. | insanity revolution | William S. Burroughs | |
| fa2fae0 | I hate Erma," I told Mom... "You have to show compassion for her..." She added that you should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. "Everyone has something good about them," she said. "You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that." "Oh yeah?" I said. "How about Hitler? What was his redeeming quality?" "Hitler loved dogs," Mom said without hesitation." | Jeannette Walls | ||
| 8a1f8c2 | People never explain to you exactly what they think and feel and how their thoughts and feelings work, do they? They don't have time. Or the right words. But that's what books do. It's as though your daily life is a film in the cinema. It can be fun, looking at those pictures. But if you want to know what lies behind the flat screen you have to read a book. That explains it all. | Sebastian Faulks | ||
| 3a70fc1 | Imagine you are walking down a leafy path...The sun is receding, and you are walking alone, caressed by the breezy light of the late afternoon. Then suddenly, you feel a large drop on your right arm. Is it raining? You look up. The sky is still deceptively sunny...seconds later another drop. Then, with the sun still perched in the sky, you are drenched in a shower of rain. This is how memories invade me, abruptly and unexpectedly... | Azar Nafisi | ||
| 340503f | Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. | Azar Nafisi | ||
| 6ff2596 | Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational | Scott Adams | ||
| b36d4a8 | The source of all unhappiness is other people. As soon as you learn to think of other people as noisy furniture, the sooner you will be happy. | Scott Adams | ||
| ee2f35c | We all wanted what we wanted, and when the Lord fulfilled HIS purpose rather than ours, we struck out against him. In anger. In disappointment. Yet, it is God's will that prevails. | Francine Rivers | ||
| ebd56e3 | Some people, if they didn't make it hard for themselves, might fall asleep. | Saul Bellow | ||
| b3136c8 | Lunacy is when you can't see the seams where they stitched the world together anymore. | Stephen King as Richard Bachman | ||
| 0335cce | I held a jewel in my fingers And went to sleep. The day was warm, and winds were prosy; I said: "'T will keep." I woke and chid my honest fingers,-- The gem was gone; And now an amethyst remembrance Is all I own." | poetry | Emily Dickinson | |
| fa366c5 | The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B. Once you were beautiful. | Sylvia Plath | ||
| 79a4dc3 | She didn't like to be talked about. Equally, she didn't like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she was not there. There was no pleasing her, in fact. She had the grace, even at eleven, to know there was no pleasing her. She thought a lot, analytically, about other people's feelings, and had only just begun to realize that this was not usual, and not reciprocated. | A.S. Byatt | ||
| 8b8fa84 | She smiled darkly and shook her head. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That's the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I'm saying? | Dennis Lehane | ||
| cf2df90 | It's the most charming thing about humans. You are all so sure that the lesser animals are bleeding with envy because they didn't have the good fortune to be born Homo sapiens. | Orson Scott Card | ||
| 1ef31ee | Throughout his life the memory of that happy day stayed locked secretly in (his) heart. | Brian Jacques | ||
| 4d00d24 | Vampires do breathe, by the way, but their chests don't move like humans'. Have you ever lain in the arms of your sweetheart and tried to match your breathing to his, or hers? You do it automatically. Your brain only gets involved if your body is having trouble. Fortunately there was nothing about this situation that was like being in the arms of a sweetheart except that I was leaning against someone's naked chest. I could no more have brea.. | humor vampires | Robin McKinley | |
| 22ef26f | There isn't any such thing as an ordinary life. (92) | life living living-life | L.M. Montgomery | |
| ad5c22c | Successful women don't sleep until noon. | Barbara Taylor Bradford |