Lauren Bachman > Lauren's Quotes

“Don't miss the bus, boy. You're missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was seen in the eyes of her loved one.”
― Raymond Carver, Cathedral

“But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“There’s a pattern and we’re a part of it. Yet if you scratched very deep at that idea of pattern (which apparently he had never taken the trouble to do), you hit an emptiness so dark that it destroyed, categorically, anything you’d ever looked at or thought of as light.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

“And as much as I’d like to believe there’s a truth beyond illusion, I’ve come to believe that there’s no truth beyond illusion. Because, between ‘reality’ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, there’s a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic. And - I would argue as well - all love.

...

And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky - so the space where I exist, and I want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, however much one may go to them for pleasure.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“Indeed, since freedom and fullness of expression are of the essence of the art, such a lack of tradition, such a scarcity and inadequacy of tools, must have told enormously upon the writing of women. Moreover, a book is not made of sentences laid end to end, but of sentences built, if an image helps, into arcades or domes. And this shape too has been made by men out of their own needs for their own uses. There is no reason to think that the form of the epic or of the poetic play suits a woman any more than the sentence suits her.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“You don't just have ink in your blood. It's in your bones. Your skeleton's black with it.”
― Rachel Caine, Ink and Bone

“Books spoke mind to mind, soul to soul across the abyss of time and distance.”
― Rachel Caine, Paper and Fire

“You may live in your small, dark corner and light a candle and pretend it is the sun; in time, you might even believe it. I certainly cannot stop you. But I will mourn for those you drag into the darkness along with you.”
― Rachel Caine, Sword and Pen

“I hate that I see the world through eyes you crafted.”
― Rachel Caine, Sword and Pen

“It's funny how when you've been starved of such experiences you want to hold them and not let them go.”
― James R. Doty, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

“Others can create your reality only if you don't create it yourself.”
― James R. Doty, Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart

“Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you've been in before - you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I gave up practically the whole world for you,” I tell him, walking through the front door of my own love story. “The sun, stars, ocean, trees, everything, I gave it all up for you.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“He floated into the air high above the sleeping forest, his green hat spinning a few feet above his head. In his hand was the open suitcase and out of it spilled a whole sky of stars.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“She'd said not to feel like we had to copy exactly. I didn't copy at all. I shook up the originals in my head and let them out all covered in me.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Plus, now that color has refastened itself to everything, it's supernaturally amazing to be in the trees.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“We're under a streetlamp and I'm trying not to stare but it's hard. I wish the world would stick like a clock so I could look at him for as long as I want. There' something going on in his face right now, something very bright trying to get out - a dam keeping back a wall of light. His soul might the a sun. I've never met anyone who had the sun for a soul.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Then he bestows the final commandment onto me: Thou shalt remake the world.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I close my eyes and drown in color, open them and drown in light because billions and billions of buckets of light are being emptied on our heads from above.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“At the same time, we reach for each other and then we're in each other's arms, joined together, pressed together, but this time not kissing, not moving, just holding each other so tightly. Moments pass, lots and lots of them, with us holding on, it feels like for dear life, or maybe holding on to dear life. So dear.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I carry my fears on my face, running in a desolate world, reaching for my distant fate. I'd love to rest my mind, shed my stories, so I hope you wrap me in your favorite songs while I fall asleep.”
― Doileag Dacier

“when death
takes my hand
i will hold you with the other
and promise to find you
in every lifetime”
― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers