The best Book Quotes (Page 27)

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.

There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.

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.

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.

An image like a forgotten dream develops like a Polaroid in my memory.

When did I acquire a conscience?

Calling to the gods, she's every inch a goddess.

I take a slug of my drink and scan the room. That's what I want now: a hot, willing woman, skinny or otherwise. It's Let's F*ck Thursday.

'Have you travelled at all?' 'No. Only in books.' Her smile brightens the room. 'I have travelled all over the world in books. And I've been to America watching TV.'

It's a tough job, but someone has to do it. Might as well be me.