The best Book Quotes

Once upon a time, there was a tiny country called Cornucopia, which had been ruled for centuries by a long line of fair-haired kings. The king at the time of which I write was called King Fred the Fearless. He'd announced the ‘Fearless’ bit himself, on the morning of his coronation, partly because it sounded nice with 'Fred', but also because he'd once managed to catch and kill a wasp all by himself, if you didn't count five footmen and the boot boy.

I can see the stars again, my lady.- Zoe Nightshade

Weakness is a guise. Wear it when they need to know you’re human, but never when you feel it.

The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.

"It's not natural for women to fight."
"It's not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet there you stand."

She'd laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have.

Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.

When people say impossible, they usually mean improbable.

The less you say, the more weight your words will carry.

I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept from this oath.

Na razrusha'ya. I am not ruined. E'ya razrushost. I am ruination.

"I thought you wanted to go." - "I wanted you to ask me to stay."

But the girl had spent long years being invisible. She’d already had a ghost’s life, hidden from the world and from herself. Better than anyone, she knew the power of things long buried.

The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea.

There is a particular happiness in giving a man whom you like very much, good food that you have cooked yourself.

Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.

You cowboy around with the Avengers some. Guys got, what, armor. Magic. Super-powers. Super-strength. Shrink-dust. Grow-rays. Magic. Healing factors. I’m an orphan raised by carnies fighting with a stick and a string from the Paleolithic era.

You're gonna miss each and every shot you can't be bothered to take. That's not living life - that's just being a tourist. Take every shot, Kate. If it's worth caring about, no matter how impossible you think it is - you take the shot.

Good is not a thing you are. It is a thing you do.

If I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.

There is always something left to love.

It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.

They were so close to each other that they preferred death to separation.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

The only thing crueler than a cage so
small that a bird can’t fly is a cage so
large that a bird thinks it can fly.

The problem with books is that they end. They seduce you. They spread their legs to you and pull you inside. And you go deep and leave your possessions and your ties to the world at the door and you like it inside and you don't want for your possessions or your ties and then, the book evaporates.

Work in a bookstore and learn that most people in this world feel guilty about being who they are.

I don't say anything. I know the power of silence. I remember my dad saying nothing and I remember his silences more vividly than I remember the things he said.

Happiness is believing that you're gonna be happy. It's hope.

It is possible to know people. They show you who they are. You just have to be looking.

Because you simply cannot draw these things out for ever. At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid and it hurts, but then it’s over and you’re relieved.

Love wasn't possible without a self, and nor was thinking.

As Schopenhauer said about free will, you can choose whatever you desire, but you're not free to choose your desires.

Millions dying of diseases we know how to cure. Millions living in poverty when there's enough to go around. We degrade the biosphere when we know it's our only home. We threaten each other with nuclear weapons when we know where it could lead. We love living things but we permit a mass extinction of species. And all the rest – genocide, torture, enslavement, domestic murder, child abuse, school shootings, rape and scores of daily outrages. We live alongside this torment and aren't amazed when we still find happiness, even love. Artificial minds are not so well defended.

Factory settings - a contemporary synonym for fate.

From a certain point of view, the only solution to suffering would be the complete extinction of humankind.

A man newly in love knows what life is.

Natürlich kommt es immer auf die Wahrheit an. Was wollt ihr denn für eine Welt? Eine, in der Rache herrscht oder Recht? Die Wahl ist einfach.

When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.

No emergency was ever dealt with effectively by democratic process.

Self-consciousness is the destroyer of erotic joy.

This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.

He was discovering that being in love was not a steady state, but a matter of fresh surges or waves, and he was experiencing one now.

It was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper.

They regarded themselves as too sophisticated to believe in destiny, but still, it remained a paradox to them that so momentous a meeting should be accidental, so dependent on a hundred minor events and choices. What a terrifying possibility, that it might never have happened at all.

It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.

All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them.

I'm holding back, delaying the information. I'm lingering in the prior moment because it was a time when other outcomes were still possible.

When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.