Abby W. > Abby's Quotes

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“What is a quote? A quote (cognate with quota) is a cut, a section, a slice of someone's orange. You suck the slice, toss the rind, skate away.”
― Anne Carson, Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera

“Why did you do all this for me?' he asked. 'I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' 'You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us--”
― Mary Oliver, Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

“There are so many people who’ve come before us,
arrows and wagon wheels, obsidian tools, buffalo.
Look out at the meadow, you can almost see them,
generations dissolved in the bluegrass and hay.
I want to try and be terrific. Even for an hour.”
― Ada Limón, Bright Dead Things

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Are we living a life that is safe from harm?

Of course not. We never are. But that’s not the right question. The question is are we living a life that is worth the harm?”
― Joseph Fink, Welcome to Night Vale

“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Librarians are hideous creatures of unimaginable power. And even if you could imagine their power, it would be illegal. It is absolutely illegal to even try to picture what such a being would be like.”
― Joseph Fink, Welcome to Night Vale

“Comfort was the answer to all life's problems. It didn't solve them, but it made them more distant for a bit as they quietly worsened.”
― Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor, Welcome to Night Vale

“The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Grim Grotto

“Still, even without the country or a lake, the summer was a fine thing, particularly when you were at the beginning of it, looking ahead into it. There would be months of beautifully long, empty days, and each other to play with, and the books from the library.”
― Edward Eager, Half Magic

“Omnia mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, nothing perishes).”
― Publius Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses

“But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. [...] True sorrow is as rare as true love.”
― Stephen King, Carrie

“She had written something that felt like I could have written it, except I knew I couldn't have. I wouldn't have come up with something like that. Which is what we all want from art, isn’t it? When someone pins down something that feels like it lives inside us? Takes a piece of your heart out and shows it to you? It’s like they are introducing you to a part of yourself.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”
― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”
― Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence

“Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“The best kind of book," said Barnaby, "is a magic book."

"Naturally," said John.”
― Edward Eager, Seven-Day Magic

“We had our breakfasts--whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast.”
― Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.”
― Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

“Songs can be incredibly prophetic, like subconscious warnings or messages to myself, but I often don't know what I'm trying to say till years later. Or a prediction comes true and I couldn't do anything to stop it, so it seems like a kind of useless magic.”
― Florence Welch, Useless Magic: Lyrics and Poetry

“...whatever/ returns from oblivion/ returns to find a voice.”
― Louise Glück, The Wild Iris

“Is that why you stare at the stars?” he asked. “Are you searching for beauty or dreaming with your eyes wide open?”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Gods of Jade and Shadow