Your favorite book quotes?

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happyville

Well-Known Member
#1
I thought members of this board might benefit from this, so here are a few of my favorite quotes - some about depression, some inspirational, some about being happy, some about nothing at all, but hopefully there's at least one that someone can relate to. :) I decided to pull all of these from books I've read or heard about so it wouldn't just be a random search in google for 'depression/inspirational quotes', and these are all quotes I've written down in my diary. I hope this helps someone, *anyone*, and if you have any book quotes of your own, feel free to post them in the replies! And let me know if you relate to any of these.

"It was one shining moment of glory that was instantly gone. Whereas life, real life, is different and can’t even be appraised as simply “happy”, but only in terms of “Yes, I’ll take it all, thanks,” or “no, I believe I won’t.” Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life’s about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me."
- Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land, p 255, Alfred A. Knopf, 2006

"We've all got meanness in us but we've all got goodness too and the only thing worth living for is the good and that is why we've got to make sure and pass it on."
Where the Heart Is

"Stuff your eyes with wonder… live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories."
-Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

"Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit... And I thought: am I really going to spend the rest of my life without feeling that again? I thought: I want to go to China. It's full of treasures and strangeness and mysteries and joy."
The Amber SpyglassPhilip Pullman

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof."
— Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams)

"She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet."
— EL&IC

"She had learned early in her life that if you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it. If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and in many ways that was worse than finding out you were wrong in the first place. Because if you were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and wondering what might have been."
- Message in a Bottle

"Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost."
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

"We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers."
The Unbearable Lightness of Being

"There had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory."
~"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" Betty Smith

“Her face occupied that place I thought I lived in alone.”
The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers

"Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past."
~ Chris McCandless (Into the Wild)

"She did refer, however, to her own misfortune at the hands of love some sixty years earlier. 'You never get over it ... But you get to where it doesn't bother you so much.' "
~"The Virgin Suicides" Jeffrey Eugenides

"Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of."
— Markus Zusak (I Am the Messenger)

“You gave your life to become the person you are right now. Was it worth it?”
Richard Bach (One)

"The trouble with words is that no matter how much sense they make in theory, they can't change what you feel inside."
~"Beautiful Malice" Rebecca James

"The man carried index cards in his pocket, and his children often saw him writing on these cards. They thought he was writing notes about farm chores. When he died, one of his kids discovered the index cards were a running diary; they were notes of desperation to himself. He wanted a bigger life than the farm, but was destined to die never having tried for that life.

It was a town filled with people like that."
Dale Maharidge (Denison, Iowa)

“We take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels, so we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.”
- G.K. Chesterton, “Orthodoxy”

“We must continue to struggle through our confusion, to insist on being human.”
R.D. Lang

“Even though you’re refracted, you’re still you.”
From Steve Martin’s play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile”

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww'."
On the Road--Jack Kerouac

And I'll cap this off with my ultimate favorite two quotes, ever, both from Paris to the Moon by Adam Gopnik:

“You can’t run away from a.) Reality, b.) American Culture, or c.) Yourself,” our friends all said compositely.
“But you can run away,” we said under our breaths, and we did.
-
The hardest thing to convey is how lovely it all is and how that loveliness seems all you need. The ghosts that haunted you in New York or Pittsburgh will haunt you anywhere you go, because they’re your ghosts and the house they haunt is you. But they become disconcerted, shaken confused for half a minute, and in that moment on a December at four o’clock when you’re walking from the bus stop to the rue Saint-Dominique and the lights are twinkling across the river–only twinkling in the bateaux-mouches, luring the tourists, but still…–you feel as if you’ve escaped your ghosts if only because, being you, they’re transfixed looking at the lights in the trees on the other bank, too, which they haven’t seen before, either.

It’s true that you can’t run away from yourself. But we were right: you can run away.
 

skyisburning

Well-Known Member
#2
“I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth.” - A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson



"There comes a time when the sun is defiant. Just about the time when moods change, inevitable seasons of a day, transitions from one color to another, that hour or minute or second when the sun is finally defeated, finally sinks into the realization that it cannot with all its power to heal or burn, exist forever, there comes an illumination where the sun and earth meet, a final burst of burning red orange fury reminding us that although endings are inevitable, they are necessary for rebirths.." from the short story "The Moths" by Helena Maria Viramontes

.....I'll add more later. I just can't think of any others and I have to be at work at 9, too....BOO
 

Brandon

Well-Known Member
#3
Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
 

Avarice

Well-Known Member
#5
Ooh, I have loads to share!

" I'm not really the kind of man who knows what cars are called, but I had made it my business - furtively lingering over the ads in glossy magazines - to find out the handle of this particular hot little number. Yes, it's true. Our eyes had met before. "
- Man and Boy by Tony Parsons.

" .. when man enters land, he should leave only footprints and take only memories. "
- Man and Boy by Tony Parsons.

" I once read that, in any relationship, the one who cares the least is the one with all the power. "
- Man and Boy by Tony Parsons.

" "You drift through the years and life seems tame, then a stranger appears and love is his name." Life just seems so tame, so empty without the stranger. "
- Man and Boy by Tony Parsons.

" That's so funny I think my sense of humour just imploded. "
- Cell by Stephen King.

" To the flash and the vulgar; may we inherit the earth. "
- Wicked by Unknown (can't remember - not the musical version)

" If I die in a combat zone, bag me up and ship me home. If I die in a state of sin, close your eyes and let me in. "
- Hearts In Atlantis by Stephen King.

" Fear the unformed. "
- Desperation by Stephen King.

" In these silences, something may rise. "
- Desperation by Stephen King.

" As beautiful as the sin you never had the nerve to commit. "
- Cell by Stephen King.

" Either you've been drooling in your sleep, or a herd of snails just crawled over your chin and into your mouth. "
- Mr. Murder by Dean Koontz.

" I eat, I get fat; it works. "
- Chart Throb by Ben Elton.

" I'm a very neat monster. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" Killing makes me feel good. It works the knots out of darling Dexter's dark schemata. It's a sweet release, a necessary letting go of all the little hydraulic valves inside. I enjoy my work; sorry if that bothers you. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" "Where were you last night?" she said. Very sour, as I'd expected. Soon those frown lines would turn permanent, ruining a wonderful face: deep blue eyes, alive with intelligence, and small upturned nose with just a dash of freckles, framed by black hair. Beautiful features, at the moment splattered about with seven pounds of cheap makeup. I looked at her with fondness. She was clearly coming from work, dressed today in a lacy bra, bright pink spandex shorts, and gold high heels. "Never mind me," I said. "Where were you?" "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" Her face had healed by now, of course. And broken arms and ribs are routine for Miami physicians. Rita was quite presentable, just what the monster ordered. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" And best of all were her two children. Astor was eight and Cody was five and they were much too quiet. They would be, of course. Children whose parents frequently attempt to kill eachother with the furniture tend to be slightly withdrawn. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" "Hey, handsome," Rita said. "Let me talk to the sitter and we're out of here." she went into the kitchen, where I heard her going over instructions with the teenager neighbour who did her babysitting. Bedtimes, Homework, TV dos and don'ts. Cell phone number. Emergency number. What to do in case of accidental poisoning or decapitation. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" I splashed water on my face and pushed my hair down. That did not, of course, answer the question, but it made me feel a little better. How bad could things be if my hair was neat? "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" I thought about the nice clothes that I always wore. Well of course I did. I took pride in being the best-dressed monster in Dade County. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" I straightened up to face my assailent with a certain bruise and a strained smile. "Hello, dear sister," I said.
"Bastard!" she hissed at me.
"Quite probably," I said. "But why bring it up now?" "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" Deborah walked me to the big double doors of the arena. "If this keeps up, I'll be crossing guard in a year," she grumbled at me.
"Nonsense, Deb," I said. "Two months, max". "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" Daryll Earl was a drunk and a wife beater. Apparently he occasionally knocked over filling stations, too, just for the entertainment value. He could be relied on to hold down a minimum wage job for a month or two. But then some fine Friday night he was the Wrath of God. So he'd drive around until he found a gas station that just pissed him off. He'd charge in waving a weapon, take the money, and then drive away. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" It made a wonderfully ironic package; the appearance of danger and the lethal reality, so very different. Because however coarse and brutal Daryll Earl looked, the real threat to society was LaGuerta. She had called off the hounds, closed down the hue and cry, sent people back to bed in a burning building. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" That might seem like no big deal. This was Miami, after all. People come home every day to find their TVs gone, their jewelry and electronics all taken away; their space violated, their possessions rifled, and their dog pregnant. But this was different. Even as I did a quick search through the apartment, I knew I would find nothing missing. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" After a long moment I closed the freezer door. I wanted to lie down and press my cheek against the cool linoleum. Instead I reached out with my little finger and flipped Barbie's head. It went thack thack against the door. I flipped it again. Thack thack. Whee. I had a new hobby. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" There was of course no possible doubt about who had been in my apartment. Unless I could swallow the idea that some stranger, for unknown reasons, had randomly chosen my apartment as the ideal spot to display his decapitated Barbie doll. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" A female voice. Not Deborah. I felt one eyelid twitch in irritation. Why do so many people start their messages with "It's me"? Of course it is you. We all know that. But who the hell ARE you? "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" Deb, of course, was unable to share my irrational mood. She looked like she had been studying the facial expressions of large fish, dour and droopy in the extreme. "Please, Deborah," I begged her, "if you don't stop, your face will be stuck like that. People will take you for a grouper."
"They're sure not going to take me for a cop," she said. "Because I won't be one anymore."
"Nonsense," I said. "Didn't I promise?"
"Yeah. You also promised that this was going to work. But you didn't say anything about the looks I'd get from Captain Matthews."
"Oh, Deb," I said. "He looked at you? I'm so sorry". "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" What should have been a pleasant interlude in my subconscious had be shaking, uncertain. I was filled with dread at the thought that my mind had skipped town and left me behind to pay the rent. I thought of the three carefully trussed playmates and wanted to go back to them and continue. I thought of Harry and knew I couldn't. I was whipsawed between a memory and a dream, and I couldn't tell which was more compelling. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" I stepped away from the closet. Unfortunately, my retreat revealed the little diorama in the closet, and the young man wa suddenly very busy finding someplace to put his breakfast. He made it to a large trash can about ten feet away before commencing his ugly blargging sounds. I stood quite still and waited for him to finish. Nasty habit, hurling half-digested food around like that. So unsanitary. "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" I did not seem to be thinking any slower or more strangely, and so far I'd had no conversations with invisible buddies that I was aware of. Except in my sleep, of course - and did that really count? Weren't we all crazy in our sleep? What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of the neighbour's children? "
- Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

" I glanced at the list beside her on the seat. "Brandon Weiss is next," I said. "Um, a writer. He wrote some ads they didn't like, and he was fired." Deborah rolled her eyes. "A writer," she said. "What did he do, threaten them with a comma?" "
- Dexter by Design by Jeff Lindsay.

" As I took a deep breath in preparation for standing up, Chutsky suddenly opened his eyes and said, "Oh, hey, buddy, the doctor said--" and was interrupted by the sound of my cell phone ringing. As I reached to answer it, a doctor stepped into the room and said, "All Right" to two interns following close behind him. And then in rapid-fire confusion I heard, from the doctor, the phone and Chutsky, "Hey, buddy, it's the doc-- Cub Scouts, and Astor's friend has the mumps-- the higher nerve center seems to be responding to..."
Once again I was very pleased not to be a normal human being, since if I was I would certainly have flung my chair at the doctor and run screaming from the room. "
- Dexter by Design by Jeff Lindsay.

" "Dex," she said in a soft and hoarse voice. She tried to smile again, but it was even worse than the first attempt, and she gave up and closed her eyes, seeming somehow to be receding into the snowy distance of the pillows. "She's not too strong yet," Chutsky said.
"I guessed that," I said.
"So, uh, don't get her tired, or anything," he said. "The doctor said."
I don't know if Chutsky thought I was going to suggest a game of volleyball, but I nodded and just patted Deborah's hand. "
- Dexter by Design by Jeff Lindsay.

That's all I have for now ~
 

plates

Well-Known Member
#6
i got one from breaking dawn. it's where bella talks about 'the end' at the end of a manuscript. i dunno but it made me laugh.
 

herbides

Active Member
#7
Some of my favorite quotes are actually from poems...

"If you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ." - (The Fox) "The Little Prince" Antoine de Saint Exupery

"The Great religions are the ships, and poetry the life boats. Every sane person I know has jumped overboard. That is good for business, Isn't it Hafiz?" Hafiz translated by Daniel Ladinsky.

idete yuku michi shiramaseba arakajime imo todomemu seki mo okamashi o "If I had but known the road my love would take away, before she could have gone I would have put a barrier across to hold her back." Outomo no Yakamochi, on the death of his lover.

"Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean. Does sunset sometimes look like the sun's coming up? Do you know what a faithful love is like? You're crying. You say you've burned yourself. But can you think of anyone who's not hazy with smoke?" --Rumi

I call through your door,
‘the mystics are gathering
in the streets. Come out!’
‘Leave me alone. I’m sick.’
‘I don’t care if you’re dead!
Jesus is here, and he wants
to resurrect somebody!’--Rumi

Yo no naka wa
Mukashi yori ya wa
Ukarikemu
Waga mi hitostsu no
Tamw ni nareru ka


Can this world
From of old
Always have been so sad,
Of did it become so for the sake
Of me alone?

[Anonymous, The Kokinshu]

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
And his Heath-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a Frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation,
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should have heard.

[W.H. Auden, The Unkown Citizen (To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)]

"Speak in French when you can’t remember the English of a thing—turn out your toes when you walk—and remember who you are!" Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-by;
And further still at an unearthly height
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong or right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

[Robert Frost]
 
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