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Bookquotes - Blog Posts
The book is very beautiful.I took the part I liked in the book and shared it.
"We're still friends. I just can't trust her or tell her anything important." - Tessa Bailey, It Happened One Summer
"He pours for me. The coffee is hot and thick and biting. Nearly deadly. Delicious." - Rebecca Serle, One Italian Summer
I’m listening to Florence Scovel Shinn’s book The Game of Life and How to Play it.
There are many lines that impact me in here, but two stood out today.
-The only enemy man has is fear
-”How can I get rid of fear?” I reply, “By walking up to the thing you are afraid of. The lion takes it’s fierceness from your fear. Walk up to the lion, and he will disappear. Run away and he runs after you.”
Idk about y’all but I sure needed to hear that.
I believed that books might save him because I knew they had so far, and because I knew the people books had saved. They were college professors and actors and scientists and poets. They got to college and sat on dorm floors drinking coffee, amazed they'd finally found their soul mates. They always dressed a little out of season. Their names were enshrined on the pink cards in the pockets of all the forgotten hardbacks in every library basement in America. If the librarians were lazy enough or nostalgic enough or smart enough, those names would stay there forever.
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai
We’re not the Faster-than-the-Speed-of-Light Generation anymore. We’re not even the Next-New-Thing Generation. We’re the Soon-to-Be-Obsolete Kids, and we’ve crowded in here to hide from the future and the past. We know what’s up – the future looms straight ahead like a black wrought-iron gate and the past is charging after us like a badass Doberman, only this one doesn’t have any letup in him.
'The Spectacular Now' by Tim Tharp
'You know what they say about mistakes though,' she said, all breathy and half-lipsy. 'It's the only way you ever learn anything.' And she leant forward and kissed him. Right there, in the middle of the bar. Right there, in the middle of his lips.
'Beatle Meets Destiny' by Gabrielle Williams
...this is the way fate usually treats us, it's right there behind us, it has already reached out a hand to touch us on the shoulder while we're still muttering to ourselves, It's all over, that's it, who cares anyhow.”
'The Tale of the Unknown Island' by José Saramago
When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.
'East of Eden' by John Steinbeck
What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul.
'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman
Without a keeper of words, stories tumble and fall, eventually melting into the ether, never to be heard of again. Stories link us to our mob, doesn't matter if you are Koorie, Irish, Kiwi, Welsh or Indian. It’s the listening and telling of these stories that bring our people close, both young and old. Stories keep our culture and our faith alive.
'Grace Beside Me' by Sue McPherson
You'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.
'The Catcher in the Rye' by J.D. Salinger
All children, except one, grow up.
'Peter Pan' by J. M. Barrie
Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
'The Perks of Being a Wallflower' by Stephen Chbosky
And the walls became the world all around.
'Where the Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak
Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.
'White Oleander' by Janet Fitch
And even if you hate her, can't stand her, even if she's ruining your life, there's something about her, some romance, some power. She's absolutely herself. No matter how hard you try, you'll never get to her. And when she dies, the world will be flat, too simple, reasonable, fair.
'Anywhere But Here' by Mona Simpson
She dreams of the moon and wakes with the taste of it still in her mouth. She knows the shape of the moon when it is full and the shape of the moon when it is crescent – has held both in her hands and understood that the moon moves between these states. She has been told the colour of the moon is silver. She has also been told that the colour of the moon is white. This is more difficult to understand, because she knows the taste of silver and she knows the taste of white and they are both very different. Perhaps the moon moves between these states, also.
‘How A Moth Becomes A Boat’ by Josephine Rowe
Am I sounding creepy? Love is sort of creepy. When you fall in love, you presuppose all sorts of things about the person. You superimpose all kinds of ideals and fantasies on them. You create all manner of unrealistic, untenable, unsatisfiable criteria for that person, automatically guaranteeing their failure and your heartbreak. And what do we call it? Romance. Now, that’s creepy.
'Creepy and Maud' by Dianne Touchell
It's a weird smile, but it reaches his eyes and I bottle it. And I put it in my ammo pack that's kept right next to my soul and Justine's spirit and Siobhan's hope and Tara's passions. Because if I'm going to wake up one morning and not be able to get out of bed, I'm going to need everything I've got to fight this disease that could be sleeping inside of me.
'Saving Francesca' by Melina Marchetta
Every time you look up at the stars, it’s like opening a door. You could be anyone, anywhere. You could be yourself at any moment in your life. You open that door and you realize you’re the same person under the same stars. Camping out in the backyard with your best friend, eleven years old. Sixteen, driving alone, stopping at the edge of the city, looking up at the same stars. Walking a wooded path, kissing in the moonlight, look up and you’re eleven again. Chasing cats in a tiny town, you’re eleven again, you’re sixteen again. You’re in a rowboat. You’re staring out the back of a car. Out here where the world begins and ends, it’s like nothing ever stops happening.
‘Lost At Sea’ by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic.
'Daughter of Smoke and Bone' by Laini Taylor
Everything in the world's got a voice; most people don't hear hard enough is all. Sunrise sounds like slow chords dripping from my guitar this morning. Sad chords, in B-flat.
'Chasing Charlie Duskin' by Cath Crowley
That’s what I love about reading; one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive – all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
‘The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society’ by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
“I’d know you in the dark,” he said. “From a thousand miles away. There’s nothing you could become that I haven’t already fallen in love with.”
'Attachments' by Rainbow Rowell
Conor blinked. Then blinked again. “You’re going to tell me stories?” Indeed, the monster said. “Well—“ Conor looked around in disbelief. “How is that a nightmare?” Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.
'A Monster Calls' by Patrick Ness
Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.
'Walk Two Moons' by Sharon Creech