Ari > Ari's Quotes

“We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names.”
― Nikita Gill

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“The sea does not like to be restrained. ”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.{140}”
― Various, Familiar Quotations

“Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of wolves.”
― Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories

“When Benjamin Bloom studied his 120 world-class concert pianists, sculptors, swimmers, tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists, he found something fascinating. For most of them, their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting. Not that they set low standards. Not at all, but they created an atmosphere of trust, not judgment. It was, “I’m going to teach you,” not “I’m going to judge your talent.” As you look at what Collins and Esquith demanded of their students—all their students—it’s almost shocking. When Collins expanded her school to include young children, she required that every four-year-old who started in September be reading by Christmas. And they all were. The three- and four-year-olds used a vocabulary book titled Vocabulary for the High School Student. The seven-year-olds were reading The Wall Street Journal. For older children, a discussion of Plato’s Republic led to discussions of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Orwell’s Animal Farm, Machiavelli, and the Chicago city council. Her reading list for the late-grade-school children included The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov, Physics Through Experiment, and The Canterbury Tales. Oh, and always Shakespeare. Even the boys who picked their teeth with switchblades, she says, loved Shakespeare and always begged for more. Yet Collins maintained an extremely nurturing atmosphere. A very strict and disciplined one, but a loving one. Realizing that her students were coming from teachers who made a career of telling them what was wrong with them, she quickly made known her complete commitment to them as her students and as people. Esquith bemoans the lowering of standards. Recently, he tells us, his school celebrated reading scores that were twenty points below the national average. Why? Because they were a point or two higher than the year before. “Maybe it’s important to look for the good and be optimistic,” he says, “but delusion is not the answer. Those who celebrate failure will not be around to help today’s students celebrate their jobs flipping burgers.… Someone has to tell children if they are behind, and lay out a plan of attack to help them catch up.” All of his fifth graders master a reading list that includes Of Mice and Men, Native Son, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, The Joy Luck Club, The Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Separate Peace. Every one of his sixth graders passes an algebra final that would reduce most eighth and ninth graders to tears. But again, all is achieved in an atmosphere of affection and deep personal commitment to every student. “Challenge and nurture” describes DeLay’s approach, too. One of her former students expresses it this way: “That is part of Miss DeLay’s genius—to put people in the frame of mind where they can do their best.… Very few teachers can actually get you to your ultimate potential. Miss DeLay has that gift. She challenges you at the same time that you feel you are being nurtured.”
― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”
― Robert Burns, To a Mouse

“Delly lost her temper at Peeta over how he treated you. She got very squeaky. It was like someone stabbing a mouse with a fork repeatedly.”
― Suzanne Collins , Mockingjay

“Sticks and stones are hard on bones, Aimed with angry art, Words can sting like anything But silence breaks the heart.’ Phyllis McGinley, "Ballade of Lost Objects," 1954”
― Lilliana Anderson, A Beautiful Struggle

“At the core, you’ve got to get university certification for parenting, just as you do for, say, being a doctor or an engineer. No offence to you or your species, but going into the business of creating life without any sort of formal prep is . . .’ He laughed. ‘It’s baffling. But then, I’m biased.”
― Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit

“All of you do this. Every organic sapient I’ve ever talked to, every book I’ve read, every piece of art I’ve studied. You are all desperate for purpose, even though you don’t have one. You’re animals, and animals don’t have a purpose. Animals just are. And there are a lot of intelligent – sentient, maybe – animals out there who don’t have a problem with that. They just go on breathing and mating and eating each other without a second thought. But the animals like you – the ones who make tools and build cities and itch to explore, you all share a need for purpose. For reason. That thinking worked well for you, once. When you climbed down out of the trees, up out of the ocean – knowing what things were for was what kept you alive. Fruit is for eating. Fire is for warmth. Water is for drinking. And then you made tools, which were for certain kinds of fruit, for making fire, cleaning water. Everything was for something, so obviously, you had to be for something too, right? All of your histories are the same, in essence. They’re all stories of animals warring and clashing because you can’t agree on what you’re for, or why you exist.”
― Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.”
― Christopher Paolini, Eragon

“His name is Robert Paulson and he is forty-eight years old. His name is Robert Paulson, and Robert Paulson will be forty-eight years old, forever.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

“And yet I swear
I love this earth
that scars and scalds,
that burns my feet.

And even hell is holy.”
― Gregory Orr

“The young man leaped from his chair and began to chant the words of a dark curse, but before he could finish someone came up behind him and knocked him unconscious with a tray of sausages.”
― Adam Gidwitz, A Tale Dark and Grimm

“Indiscreet, dear girl, means we shouldn’t have been talking about what we were talking about where we were talking about it.”
― Adam Gidwitz, A Tale Dark & Grimm

“...and William said, "O Lord God, we have tried to hear Your voice above the din of other voices. Above the heresy--and even above the orthodoxy. Above the abbots and the masters. Above the knights and even the kings. And though this world is confusing and strange, we believe we have heard Your voice and followed it--followed it here, to this place. Now please, God, hear us. Help us, watch over us, and protect us as we face the flames of hate. Please, God, please. And they all said, "Amen.”
― Adam Gidwitz, The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog

“A hug from a child! he exclaims. Perhaps God's greatest invention!”
― Adam Gidwitz, The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog

“You are like pomegranates split open. Even the emptiest among you are as full of good as a pomegranate is full of seed.”
― Adam Gidwitz, The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog

“And I read something else," Jacob goes on. "There was this discussion of the story of Cain and Abel, from the Bible. After Cain kills his brother, God says, 'The bloods of your brother call out to me.' Not blood. Bloods. Weird, right? So the Talmud tries to explain it."

"I can explain it," says William. "The scribe was drunk."

"William!" cries Jeanne. "The Bible is written by God!"

"And copied by scribes," the big boy replies. "Who get drunk. A lot. Trust me."

Jacob is laughing. "The rabbis have a different explanation. The Talmud says it's 'bloods' because Cain didn't only spill Abel's blood. He spilled the blood of Abel and all the descendants he never had."

"Huh!"

"And then it says something like, 'Whoever destroys a single life destroys the whole world. And whoever saves a single life saves the whole world."

There are sheep in the meadow beside the road. Gwenforte walks up to the low stone wall, and one sheep--a ram--doesn't run away. They sniff each other's noses. Her white fur beside the ram's wool--two textures, two colors, both called white in our inadequate language.

Jeanne is thinking about something. At last, she shares it. "William, you said that it takes a lifetime to make a book."

"That's right."

"One book? A whole lifetime?"

William nods. "A scribe might copy out a single book for years. An illuminator would then take it and work on it for longer still. Not to mention the tanner who made the parchment, and the bookbinder who stitched the book together, and the librarian who worked to get the book for the library and keep it safe from mold and thieves and clumsy monks with ink pots and dirty hands. And some books have authors, too, like Saint Augustine or Rabbi Yehuda. When you think about it, each book is a lot of lives. Dozens and dozens of them."

Dozens and dozens of lives," Jeanne says. "And each life a whole world."

"We saved five books," says Jacob. "How many worlds is that?"

William smiles. "I don't know. A lot. A whole lot.”
― Adam Gidwitz, The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog

“If we could hear our own songs, if we could see God’s creation the way God does, we would know it’s the most beautiful song there is.”
― Adam Gidwitz, The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog

“No matter how much wisdom is in a book, is it right to trade your life for it?”
― Adam Gidwitz, The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog

“Don't bring your morality around me. Morals is for people who's already got food.”
― Adam Gidwitz, The Inquisitor's Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog