Lauren Bachman > Lauren's Quotes

“Literature has its own logic; it is not life. Not only that, but (and this is key): characters are not people... and we forget that at our peril.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“More important, we're all capable of growth, development, and change. We can get better, although we sometimes fail to do so. To put this another way, we are all, each and every last one of us, the protagonist of our own story.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“Different: no guilty party exists in the narrative (unless you count the author, who is present everywhere and nowhere).”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“On one level, everyone who writes anything knows pure originality is impossible. Everywhere you look, the ground is already camped on. So you sigh and pitch your tent where you can, knowing someone else has been there before.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“Own the books you read. Also poems, stories, flash fiction, plays, memoirs, movies, creative nonfiction, and all the rest. ... take ownership of your reading. It's yours. It's special. It is exactly like nobody else's in the whole world.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“Your reading should be fun. We only call them literary works. Really, though, it's all a form of play. So play, Dear Reader, play.
And fare thee well.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“I am I, and I wish I wasn't.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“O brave new world that has such people in it.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Happiness is a hard master--particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestionably, than truth.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“If you could fly to France in one minute, you could go straight into the sunset, right from noon. Unfortunately, France is too far away for that. But on your tiny planet, my little prince, all you need do is move your chair a few steps. You can see the day end and the twilight falling whenever you like...
"One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"
And a little later you added:
"You know -- one loves the sunset, when one is so sad..."
"Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"
But the little prince made no reply.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform. Accepted authority rests first of all on reason.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets himself be tamed.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It is the same as that on the preceding page, but I have drawn it again to impress it on your memory. It is here that the little prince appeared on Earth, and disappeared.

Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognise it in case you travel some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems... But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me... You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Creativity is the auma of the universe, David. A good story, written with heart and feeling, can touch many people and raise their awareness of global issues.”
― Chris d'Lacey, Icefire

“Mr. Langdon all questions were once spiritual. Since the beginning of time spirituality and religion have been called on to fill in the gaps that science did not understand. The rising and setting of the sun was once attributed to Helios and a flaming chariot. Earthquakes and tidal waves were the wrath of Poseidon. Science has now proven those gods to be false idols. Soon all gods will be proven to be false idols. Science has now provided answers to almost every question man can ask. There are only a few questions left and they are the esoteric ones. Where do we come from What are we doing here? What is the meaning of life and the universe? ”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

“Maybe I had picked a hole in the sky and the universe was all about to fall in on me.”
― Kami Garcia, Beautiful Creatures

“The days without you bleed together until time is nothing more than another obstacle we must overcome.”
― Kami Garcia, Beautiful Creatures

“It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“I loved her, atom by atom, one burning cell at a time.”
― Kami Garcia, Beautiful Darkness

“I watched the sky knit itself back together one stitch at a time. But it didn't look the same. I could still see the invisible seams where the world had torn itself in half to take her. And I would always know they were there, even if no one else could see them. Like torn edges of my heart.”
― Kami Garcia, Beautiful Redemption

“Man, what kind of a fucked-up world is this? You should have to be a lot more than decent to be a kid's hero.”
― Chris Crutcher, Whale Talk

“I'm a little kinder to myself most of the time. I tell myself I learned an important lesson the hard way: that the universe doesn’t make allowances for mental lapses or ignorance, but that maybe I'm a better man because I know that.”
― Chris Crutcher, Whale Talk