We love quotes. Here at geekylibrary, we read with post-it flags in hand, ready to mark our favorite quotes. We’ve built an enormous quote library. We include a quote in every book review.
And above all, we like sharing quotes. Here are some of the more bookish quotes we’ve found.
Now it’s your turn!
To participate in this 24-hour Readathon Challenge, find a quote. It can be on any topic, just make sure it isn’t too long. Then comment on this post with the quote, book and the author to be entered into the prize drawing.
For an extra entry, record a quick video (selfie style is fine) of you reciting the quote. You’re welcome to embellish with costumes or props, or keep it simple. Just make sure you show us the book and then paste the link to your video in the comment on this post.
In the spirit of this challenge, and in honor of Shakespeare’s 400th Birthday today, here’s my quick video with a quote from William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher!
Three winners will be chosen randomly to win their choice of two books. Bookish buttons and GeekyLibrary stickers will also be included!
Enjoy! We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Join in our geeky bookish fun! Subscribe to GeekyLibrary and never miss a post.
Update: Thanks to everyone to participating! What a great turnout. We’ve turned off comments (our entry form) and published a recap of the mini-challenge with the winners and highlights.
Kallen Kentner ·
“Tuesdays are our group night in the Agora. We hang out and usually frag each other’s brains out in an FPS. Pop in. You can meet the crew and take a head shot or two.” From Lock In, by John Scalzi.
“Not feeling your body is very strange. I’m reduced to a disembodied field of vision connected to a free floating tongue. I set off, aware of motion only thanks to the visible passage of my surroundings. The taste of my own mouth is overpowering. I have to keep looking to reassure myself that my body is still there and realize that when I see the others and fire I won’t know if the signal has gone from brain to hand until I see them fall.”
A Sense of Foul Play, by Andrew Coulthard
from the anthology Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep, edited by Peter Oberg.
“My words are unerring tools of destruction, and I’ve come unequipped with the ability to disarm them.”
“The Raven Boys” by Maggie Stiefvater
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking” – Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Another bookish quote! I love it!
“The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying?”
~The Book Theif by Markus Zusak
“Uncle Chris is gay,” Cassie tells the realtor with relish.
“Really,” Jessica says, a polite but amused expression plastered on her face.
“Mhmm,” Cassie says. “That means he doesn’t like girls. He likes boys instead. My mommy says that’s okay, though. You can like whoever you want to like.”
“Is that so”.
“Yes. So when I grow up, I’m going to marry a penguin.”
― Anna Martin, Tattoos & Teacups
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,however improbable, must be the truth?
From The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“Even darkness must pass, a new day will come. And when the sun shines out, it will shine out the clearer.”
-The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
“Nature’s first green is gold/Her hardest hue to hold/Her early leaf’s a flower/But only so an hour” from “New Englarged Anthology of Robert Frost’s Poems” with an introduction and commentary by Louis Untermeyer. <3
“Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”
― H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
War of the Worlds! How classic!
“Reality exists within the scope of your senses. If you feel it, it’s real.” – Myriad Firstlife by Gena Showalter
“But I can assure you that our kind of journeys – the sort you take without moving – are even more adventurous and illuminating.” Leona Francombe, The Sage of Waterloo
“Home isn’t where you’re from. It’s where you find light when all grows dark.” – Piece Brown, Golden Son
Thanks for the mini-challenge!
I crave for love stories, so here is a love quote 🙂
“And so we stood together like that, at the top of that field for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us from being swept away into the night.”
By Kazuo Ishiguro, from the novel “Never Let Me Go”
“Ella found it difficult to stay away from the papery dust of the library for any length of time.”
The Rabbit Back Literature Society
pasi ilmari jääskeläisen
I love the idea of the “papery dust.” It’s a perfect description!
“We do not remember days, we remember moments.” from All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
“The silence is the worst part of any fight, because its made up of all the things we wish we could say, if only we had the guts.” Gray – Pete Wentz
“I’m not strange, wierd, off nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours” -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
You have brains in your head, and feet in your shoes. You can steer your life any direction you choose. Dr Suess The Places You Will Go
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”- Good Ole AA Milne, Winnie the Pooh
“‘Looks like this wasn’t such a f– picnic after all. You have the right the remain silent,’ she began.” — Seduction in Death by J.D. Robb
“‘Good intention’ is a hall pass through history, a sleeping pill that ensures the dream.”
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
“Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” -Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
“I want to be like that, she told herself as she always did. I want to protect people. And I will. I will. I’ll be a hero one day, just like Mama. Just like the Lioness.”
From First Test, by Tamora Pierce.
“Scared is what you’re feeling,” says Ma, “but brave is what you’re doing.” Room by Emma Donoghue
“Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.” The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale
“Books? And Cleverness? There are more important things, friendship and bravery.” – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling.
Favorite quote from my current read: “When the world is too much to take and when you feel sad, go to the beach and dig in the sand. Run on the beach so the wind blows your hair around…and fly a kite into the summer sky, so high that I can touch it from heaven and make it dance.” The Charm Bracelet by Viola Shipman
Hubs’ favorite: “I was the kid at the crossing.” from Flint by Louis L’Amour
“It is one of life’s bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
“Whenever you’re unsure of yourself, whenever you’re in doubt, ask yourself three questions. What do you believe in? What do you hope for? But most important, ask yourself, what do you love?” His arm was around her. “And when you answer, Tania, you will know who you are. And more important—if you ask this question of the people around you, you will know who they are, too.”
― Paullina Simons, The Summer Garden
“It’s okay to break the rules, but only sometimes, and only if you know them very, very well.” I absolutely love this quote from Heist Society by Ally Carter! 🙂
“Children are nothing but a problem people create and then congratulate themselves for solving.” From The Sisterhood by Curtis Sittenfeld.
“I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them.” –Atul Gawande from his book “Being Mortal”
“Heh-heh. That’s what you don’t understand. You killed Nix, Wade, Old Scrug, and you’ll soon kill me…you can kill all of us…but there will always be some mean-spirited, miserable bastards out there to take up the banner!” – The Goon: Once Upon A Hard Time (Part 4 of 4) by Eric Powell
“Sometimes life takes us into waters we did not chart. Could this… could this not just be a chapter of your life, rather than the whole book?” – Three Wishes by Lisa T. Bergren
“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
“Every writer has met with his words time and again. They have had frequent conversations. They have even flirted with each other. But there are those rare moments when the shadows and the naked bodies of the writer and the words, in one time frame of the story, in one setting of the story, are coupled. They become two lovers who have long known each other and who in their clandestine meetings have frequently concealed their longing for one another.”
From Censoring an Iranian Love Story, by Shahriar Mandanipour
“If you think the only people you should have in your country are the people you produce yourselves, you are an idiot” – Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling
Choose well, choose wisely, and choose one. Concentrate upon that one. Do not be content until you find yourself reading in it with real enjoyment. ~ Winston Churchill, Churchill: The Power of Words
“It turns out that caring a lot about anything is, by definition, uncool, and it doesn’t matter if that thing is music or Star Wars or oil refineries.”
from This Song will Save Your Life by Leila Sales
“Stories,’ the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, ‘are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.”–Catherynne M. Valente – In The Night Garden.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… The man who never reads lives only one.”
A Dance With Dragons, George R.R. Martin
“Even in death, they’d never be alone.” The 100 by Kass Morgan
“I need to be ambushed, caught unawares, like some sort of feral love-jackal. I’m too self-conscious otherwise.”
Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl
Ooh so many good ones… here’s one of the more memorable ones I’ve read recently…
“Our stupid, sleepy suburbia, like every other stupid, sleepy suburbia, awakens groggy, indifferent to its own inconsequence…” – The Way I Used to Be by Amber Smith
“The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there…and still on your feet.”
― Stephen King, The Stand
“People matter and their names matter.” from ‘The Girl in the Wall’ by Daphne Benedis-Grab
“My own definition of a feminist is a man or a woman who says, ‘Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better.'”
–We Should All be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I am a big fan of writing down quotes from the books I am reading into my planner. This is one I liked in The Night Circus (which I am currently reading for the Read-a-thon. “Tara has never visited the clock-tipped hotel attached to St. Pancras Station, but it strikes her immediately as a temporary place.” I love all the “time” references in the sentence.
“Harry,” Bob drawled, his eye lights flickering smugly, “what you know about women, I could juggle.”
From Storm Front by Jim Butcher
“Who am I? I am who I say I am and tomorrow some else entirely. You are too nostalgic, you want memory to secure you, console you. The past is a bore. What matters is only oneself and what one creates from what one has learned. Imagination uses what it needs and discards the rest – where you want to erect a museum.”
~ White Oleander – Janet Fitch
“When you are as chronically ill as I am,you have to make some very hard choices. Ironically, people may think you’re giving up, when in fact you are simply giving in to the reality of your new life.” — How To Be Sick, Toni Bernhard
“So when people say that poetry is a luxury, or an option, or for the educated middle classes, or that it shouldn’t be read at school because it is irrelevant, or any of the strange and stupid things that are said about poetry and its place in our lives, I suspect that the people doing the saying have had things pretty easy. A tough life needs a tough language – and that is what poetry us. That is what literature offers – a language powerful enough to say how it is.
It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”
— Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
“This is your destiny, whether you want it or not.You have no choice but to follow it.”
Moth Flights Vision
By Erin Hunter
“I loved hanging out by the campfire after dark. I loved the way bits of fire dust would float up and disappear into the night air. And how the fire lit up people’s faces. I loved the sound the fire made too. And how the woods were so dark that you couldn’t see anything around you, and you’d look up and see a billion stars in the sky.”
– August (5th grader with craniofacial challenges) from the book “Wonder” by RJ Palacio
“As I’m sure you know, whenever there is a mirror around, it is almost impossible not to take a look at yourself. Even though we all know what we look like, we all like just to look at our reflections, if only to see how we’re doing.”
– Lemony Snicket, The Miserable Mill
I wondered,’ Damen said, carefully, ‘if you reserved your love for women.’
‘No, I—’ Laurent sounded surprised. Then he seemed to realise that his surprise gave something fundamental away, and he looked away with a muttered breath; when he looked back at Damen there was a wry smile on his lips, but he said, steadily, ‘No.’
Prince’s Gambit – C. S. Pacat
“If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
I know it’s cliché to use HP now but Rowling did give some great advice. In my country change it to how he treats women and it fits perfectly.
“October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins.” – from Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
“The trouble was, September didn’t know what sort of story she was in.” – The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
“The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.”
—Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me
It hath been taught us from the primal state
That he which is was wished until he were,
And the ebbed man, ne’er loved till ne’er worth love,
Comes deared by being lacked. This common body,
Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
Goes to, and back, lackeying the varying tide,
To rot itself with motion. (1.4.42)
Anthony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare:)
So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:10, The Bible, NIV
“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” – Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
“I can tell you right now, it’s all Karma’s fault.
Yes, Karma. You know, that unmistakable force in the universe that makes sure good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds are punished.”
– The Karma Club
Reading it right now and it’s freaking hilarious! 😀
“And if a guy like you can stand up and do what you did for all those people, well, maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live beyond what they’re capable of.”
Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger
“Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.” – James Joyce, Ulysses
“Books were safer than other people anyway.”
—Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane)
“Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.”
– The Help by Kathryn Stockett
“Feelings don’t try to kill you, even the painful ones. Anxiety is a feeling grown too large. A feeling grown aggressive and dangerous. You’re responsible for its consequences, you’re responsible for treating it. But, Michael, you’re not responsible for causing it. You’re not morally at fault for it.”
– The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
“All the world’s a stage, as they say, and I seem to have the only seat in the house with a view behind the curtain.” From Jackaby by William Ritter.
“Perhaps, however, it is the same with spinsters as with ghosts; and one has to be of their ranks in order to see them at all.”
― Sarah Waters, Affinity
“The garden at this hour was at its most enchanting, with moths and fireflies emerging from the rustling leaves. She could believe that the Faery Queen might step out from behind the blossoming rowan tree, her endless train of sprites and elves swirling round her.” The Dark Lady’s Mask by Mary Sharratt.
“I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
People who claim that they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us… It’s people who claim that they’re good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of
– Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
“Someday you’re really going to have to describe to me in more detail what life is like on the planet you live on. Because it sounds really great, and I’d like to visit there one day.”
― Meg Cabot, Queen of Babble in the Big City
“Life is the way it is. It’s worth what it’s worth! It does its best, within its limitations. We mustn’t ask too much of life, either. Nor should we want to suppress it!” – The Suicide Shop, by Jean Teule
“You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers.”
— Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child
https://myareads.wordpress.com/2016/04/23/updates-on-deweys-24-hour-readathon-april-2016/
“I think the heart of every living thing on earth is beating in my body” – I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson
“At only twenty-eight I felt no great rush to settle into anything boring.” Kylie Chan, White Tiger
“So long as my body lives, and yours—we are one flesh…And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours, Claire—I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you.” – Jamie; Drums of Autumn, Diana Gabaldon
My favorite quote of all time: “A Word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.” Emily Dickinson from “The Poems of Emily Dickinson”
“The duty towards discovery is not something that can be lightly cast aside. These people feel it at a very profound level, and it is not connected to financial reward, and only occasionally to public recognition. Their motivation is an unquenchable instinct to find things out and to make these discoveries known to others. Their duty is directed towards an inventory of the biosphere, which now needs their services more than ever before. It is probably one of the better manifestations of what it is to be human.”
– Richard Fortey, Dry Store Room No. 1
“You could rattle the stars. You could do anything if you only dared. And deep down, you know it too, and that’s what scares you the most.” – Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas
“I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones
“We are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere.” – Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
“Some nights, even two old friends deciding to get as close as humanly possible could still be worlds apart.” Saga, Chapter Twenty-One, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
“But I don’t want to read faster or older or anyway else that might make the story disappear too quickly from where it’s settling inside my brain, slowly becoming a part of me. A story I will remember long after I’ve read it for the second, third, tenth, hundredth time.” – Jaqueline Woodson, brown girl dreaming
“Smartypants, getting a gun in Gutshot, Tennessee, is easier than getting chlamydia from a hooker.” – An Abundance of Katherines by John Green.
This is just a seriously funny and snarky quote that I HAD to comment with!
“Maybe it was because his back was to her that she could finally speak the words. ‘I will have you without armor, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all.'”
– Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
“Open your eyes and see what you can before they close forever.” -Anthony Doerr, All The Light We Cannot See
“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest Ladies. Snakes. Spiders… Pain. Death. Brave men. Cowardly men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.”
I admit, I had to cheat as I only own it in German. But still this is my favourite quote of all the books and plays I’ve read. I love it more than Shakespeare!
It’s from William Goldmann’s Princess Bride.
Cheating is okay in this case. Thanks for posting it in English!
I dunno, the German would be fun to read, too.
“Sometimes, when I have to do something I don’t want to do, I pretend I’m a character from a book. It’s easier to know what they would do.” – Clockwork Angle by Cassandra Clare.
My video: https://www.instagram.com/p/BEjRx5vvQT5/?taken-by=bokslukaren
Even the most startling adventure, sooner or later, must become routine.
Before we Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
“Reading materials, by exercising our memory and imagination, can contribute to happiness in ways similar to active positive thinking.” – David Niven, The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People
“To love is to destroy, and to be the one loved is to be the one destroyed” -Jace
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
“I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty separate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on next door.” White Oleander by Janet Finch
Danny persisted. “D. W. Yarbrough said that you were once wedded to God–”
“Nietzsche, of course, would argue that I am a widower,” Emilio said crisply, cutting him off. “I consider that I am divorced. The separation was not amicable.”
– Mary Doria Russell in “Children of God”
“Trust. It is like placing a blade in someone’s hand and setting the very point to your heart.”
The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Maureen Johnson
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish
“I understood books. I did not understand boys – especially alien boys”
From Onyx written by Jennifer L. Armentrout
I can’t quote from my current read because it’s not out yet! But here is one of my recent favorites:
“Even the constellations can see us now: we are seventeen and shattered and still dancing. We have messy, throbbing hearts, and we are stronger than anyone could ever know.” – When We Collided, Emery Lord
Here’s the video!
That is such a beautiful quote and thanks so much for reading it to us!
“Your mail could’ve waited.” Daemon followed me into the kitchen. “What is it? Just books?”
Grabbing the OJ from the fridge, I sighed. People who didn’t heart books didn’t understand.” -Onyx by: Jennifer L. Armentrout
“As the hours crept by, the afternoon sunlight bleached all the books on the shelves to pale, gilded versions of themselves and warmed the paper and ink inside the covers so that the smell of unread words hung in the air.” – Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
I fell in lve the way you fall asleep. Slowly, then all at once
John Green – The Fault in Our Stars
“You can measure the quiet
here, far enough
from the city,
by how loud
each new statement sounds”- from the poem “Mice” by Max Winter in the Book ‘Walking Among Them.’
Video Here:
I love this and thanks so much for submitting a video!
“‘Turnabout,’ Cadsuane muttered into her tea. Some said that turnabout was fair play, but she had never believed in fighting fair. Either you fought, or you did not, and it was never a game. Fairness was for people standing safely to one side, talking while others bled. Unfortunately, there was little she could do beyond trying to find a way to balance events. Balance was not at all the same as fairness. What a dog’s dinner this was turning into.”
— Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan
“We ARE rich,” said Anne staunchly. “Why, we have sixteen years to our credit, and we’re happy as queens, and we’ve all got imaginations, more or less. Look at that sea, girls–all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn’t enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds. You wouldn’t change into any of those women if you could. Would you want to be that white-lace girl and wear a sour look all your life, as if you’d been born turning up your nose at the world? Or the pink lady, kind and nice as she is, so stout and short that you’d really no figure at all? Or even Mrs. Evans, with that sad, sad look in her eyes? She must have been dreadfully unhappy sometime to have such a look. You KNOW you wouldn’t Jane Andrews!”
– L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be”
– The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
“it’s true that nothing has the potential to hurt so much as loving someone, but nothing heals like it either”
The Love That Split The World by Emily Henry
“A place of great conflict should bring on great reflection. If it doesn’t, all might as well happened in vain.” – Leona Francombe, The Sage of Waterloo
“REMEMBER MY LAST PETUNIA” Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
From Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House no live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even Larks and Katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its Hills, holding Darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, Walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Video quote! http://Www.facebook.com/llhundley
“It wasn’t a bad way to end a long day.” Devoted in Death by J.D. Robb
“In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. Everyone knows you are the one who will fail first, and worst, if the three of you set out to seek your fortunes” – Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
“Sometimes when you’re surrounded by dirt, CJ, you’re a better witness for what’s beautiful.”
Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña; illustrated by Christian Robinson.
“What good is an illiterate revolution?” – Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before by Karelia Stetz-Waters
He’s a lawyer in Atlanta, and he’s very active in his church,” Mrs. Bennet said. “If that’s not the description of a man looking for a wife, I don’t know what is.
Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
“When the possibilities themselves had, accordingly, turned stale, when the secret of the gods had grown faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was failure. It wouldn’t have been failure to be bankrupt, dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything”,
Henry James, The Beast in the Jungle.
Here’s my most fav quote, and it’s a bookish one:
“Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.”
– from Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys
A little ruthlessness is to be admired, but it’s cruel to play with a powerless heart.
The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
My quote is https://cabbitcorner.com/2016/04/23/readathon-april-2016-hour-7-operation-quotation/
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.” Macbeth by William Shakespeare. Currently listening to it on audio.
“Even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you had your mother at your bac, you’d be okay. Some deep-rooted part of you would know you were loved. That you deserved to be loved”
From:
Jojo Moyes, One Plus One
“I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.” – Anais Nin.
She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.
“Stargirl” by Jerry Spinelli
Best opening line ever:
I woke up in bed with a man and a cat. The man was a stranger; the cat was not.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset by Robert A Heinlein
I kind of agree. That’s an awesome opening line. I hope the cat is featured in the rest of the book.
Instead of kissing her, he whispered “Imagine there was a cure, but finding it would cost you everything. It would completely ruin your life. What would you do?”
The warm air enclosed her. So close, she could catch a faint soapy smell coming from him.
His eyes bored into hers, waiting, a tinge desperate.
Cinder wet her mouth. “Ruin my life to save million others? It’s not much of a choice.”
-Cinder, Marissa Meyer
“So I used to be a girl?”
“You also used to be an egg”
“It must be scary for them,” Ethan said. “Sending one egg down the fallopian tube every month, like a sacrifice. It’s like the Hunger Games in there.”
This cracked me up 🙂 from Relativity by Antonia Hayes.
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
A boy got a splinter in his eye, and his heart turned cold. Only two people noticed. One was a witch, and she took him for her own. The other was his best friend. And she went after him in ill-considered shoes, brave and completely unprepared.
— Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu
Time has a way of burying things, shifting like the desert and swallowing entire civilizations, erasing them from map and memory. Always, in the end, everything returns to dust.
“The Forbidden Wish” by Jessica Khoury
Fantastic! I love seeing all the different quotes which stood out to everyone. Also? The great variety of genres too!
A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.
-Neil Gaiman
“We are never too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are playing all the time in one way or another. Our burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City.” Marmee, in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
“It’s a wall of stories. Take out any one, go anywhere. It’s Storyland.” Talking about a “wall’ of books, a home library from ‘The Obsession’ by Nora Roberts. Which is a fantastic book, by the way!
“Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for plannning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future–you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.” Paper Towns, John Green, pg. 33
““Are they fucking?” If I didn’t know better I would have assumed the same thing. I shook my head. “Maybe they should be,” she remarked.” – Audrey Carlan, Calendar Girl: July
“I shall take the heart. For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”
The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
“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 foolin’ a soul.” Neil Gaiman, American Gods
“Have you ever asked yourself, do monsters make war, or does war make monsters?”
Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
“Music does not have a race or a disposition! Every instrument has a voice that contributes. Music is a universal language. A universal religion of sorts. Certainly it’s my religion. Music surpasses all distinctions between people.” Pam Munoz Ryan – Echo
“When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it’s safe inside your mouth.” Willow.
Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult
“And by the way, Father’s an absolute brick. I’d be just as pleased, or very nearly, of finding he’s my father even if he weren’t a king. Even though education and all sorts of horrible things are going to happen to me.”
The Horse and His Boy, CS Lewis
Thank you for hosting! A single quote can often sell me on a book, so this is a great list to look over after RAT 🙂
“I’m not gay; I’m bisexual. There’s a difference.”
I found this quote when I was reading my first book of the readathon (Far From You – I loved it!) and I instantly had to run to get a sticky note because it’s something that I’ve actually found myself saying far too much in my lifetime hahahaha!
“Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself to become a new person.”
― Gerard Way
I’m going to quote two, because both are quite classic to me and are favourite quotes.
“Oh, that’s such shit! You’re only here because somehow it’s gonna get you something you want.”
-Aphrodite, House of Night: Burned; PC and Kristen Cast
And the 2nd one:
“You have undoubtedly pissed off upper management.”
-Alfred Bitterman,The Target, David Baldacci
“Our dreams are a serious matter. When you take them seriously everyone else does too”
Full Cicada Moon by Marilyn Hilton
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Harper Lee from to kill a mockingbird ❤
Positive thinking begins with seeking out the good in the world and within yourself.
From This is About You by Mary England.
“Because loving you saved me. It’s made me see myself differently, see the world different. I owe you everything for that.” – My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga
“Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
[…]
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.”
— W.H. Auden, “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” from his Collected Poems
My phone won’t seem to let me upload my video, which sucks since I took a break from reading to put on makeup and everything. lol I shared Words, from Sylvia Plath’s Ariel.
Axes after whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes travelling
Off from the centre like horses.
The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock
That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road______
Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.
Oh, that’s awful! If it manages to work down the line, we’d love to see it!
Oh no, that’s terrible! I hope you can upload it later!
“In that moment Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys.”
Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves
“All this happened, more or less.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter-House Five
“At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is you.”
M.T. Anderson, Octavian Nothing
“Um…is that thing tame?” Frank said.
The horse whinnied angrily.
“I don’t think so,” Percy guessed. “He just said, ‘I will trample you to death, silly Chinese Canadian baby man’.
Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune
“Wow,” Thalia muttered. “Apollo is hot.”
“He’s the sun god,” I said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
― Rick Riordan, The Titan’s Curse
“Lucky humans, who can close your minds to the endless deeps of space! You have this thing you call… boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe! We heard a song — it went ‘Twinkle twinkle little star….’ What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!” – Sir Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky.
I’ll leave this to Samwise Gamgee:
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered, full of darkness and danger they were. Sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when there’s so much bad that had happened? But in the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”
To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairytale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. But I knew the truth – deep down, I always did.
I was just a girl.
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton.
It kills me sometimes, how people die.
– The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
Ha, this is a great quote!
“It wasn’t his fault that his mom was the biggest bitch in Kansas—well, second biggest, now that I was back”
Yellow brick war by Danielle Paige
It is a mathematical certainty that there exists in which the library will never close.- The Sorrow Proper.
“If you’re going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.”
– Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King
“In times of struggle, there are as many reasons not to read as there are to breathe. Don’t you have bigger things to do? Reading, let alone re-reading, is the terrain of milquetoasts and mopey spinsters. At life’s ugliest junctures the very act of opening a book can smack of cowardly escapism. Who chooses to read when there’s work to be done?
Call me a coward if you will, but when the line between duty and sanity blurs, you can usually find me curled up with a battered book, reading as if my mental health depended on it. And it does, for inside the books I love I find food, respite, escape, and perspective.”
― Erin Blakemore, The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder
“We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.”
Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire <3
“The less time you spend dreaming up a world of happily ever after, the more time you’ll actually have to live –no evers or afters required” – Getting Over Garrett Delaney by Abby Mcdonald
“All he wanted was a nice white boy, not this sad salamander-like creature, so pale he was almost translucent, licking blood from himself in what had to be the least-erotic gesture in the world.”
Excerpt From: Yanagihara, Hanya. “A Little Life.”