It’s been a while, but this week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt (now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is favourite book quotes, and I couldn’t resist. Here are a few of my all-time favourites!
1. “I have time,” the skull replied reflectively. “It’s really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space– that’s the way life was meant to be. You’re supposed to be too late for some things. Don’t worry about it.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
2. I’m never sad when a friend goes far away, because whichever city or country that friend goes to, they turn the place friendly. They turn a suspicious-looking name on the map into a place where a welcome can be found… In fact, my daughter, I would even go so far as to say that the farther away your friends are, and the more spread out they are, the better your chances of going safely through the world.
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox
3. I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But Ive bought a big bat. Im all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
― Dr. Seuss, I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sollew
4. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
― Maggie Smith, “Good Bones”
5. The whole point of the picture, at least as he saw it, was that these two monumental bodies each came to an end in two index fingers that almost, but not quite, touched. There was a space between them a millimetre or so wide. And in this space life. The sculptural size and richness of detail of this picture was simply a frame, a backdrop, to emphasise the crucial void in its centre. The point of emptiness that contained everything. And in its place a person had superimposed a pair of jeans.
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In
6. Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
7. It was just that there was something newly powerful about this assembled family in the car. They were all growing up and into each other like trees striving together for the sun.
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King
8. I froze. It was not guilt that froze me. I had taught myself never to feel guilt. It was not a ghastly sense of loss that froze me. I had taught myself to covet nothing. It was not a loathing of death that froze me. I had taught myself to think of death as a friend. It was not heartbroken rage against injustice that froze me. I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair. It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love. It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him. What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction.
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
9. In real life, shouldn’t a wedding be an awesome party you throw with your great pal, in the presence of a bunch of your other friends? A great day, for sure, but not the beginning and certainly not the end of your friendship with a person you can’t wait to talk about gardening with the for the next forty years.
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?
10. “Sometimes I think a man could wander across the disc all his life and not see everything there is to see,” said Twoflower. “And now it seems there are lots of other worlds as well. When I think I might die without seeing a hundredth of all there is to see it makes me feel,” he paused, then added, “well, humble, I suppose. And very angry, of course.”
