Emily > Emily's Quotes

“Reading is difficult. People just aren't meant to read anymore. We're in a post-literate age. You know, a visual age. How many years after the fall of Rome did it take for a Dante to appear? Many, many years.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

“I'm always happy," Sasha said. "Sometimes I just forget.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn't really over, so you're relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

“If you stop thinking, if you stop wondering, you die.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

“The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

“If we can't take care of each other now, when the world is going to shit, how are we ever going to make it?”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

“In the first few pages, Kundera discusses several abstract historical figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's sake, I wanted him to get to the plot, to introduce actual "living" characters - I recalled this was a love story - and to leave the world of ideas behind. Here we were, two people lying in bed, Eunice's worried head propped on my collarbone, and I wanted us to feel something in common. I wanted this complex language, this surge of intellect, to be processed into love. Isn't that how they used to do it a century ago, people reading poetry to one another?”
― Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story

“For how much longer will we have the strength to tear ourselves away from everyday life and resist? How often will life give us the chance to play hooky? To thumb our noises at it? Or make our little honorarium on the side? When will we lose one another and in what way will the ties be stretched beyond repair?

How much longer until we become too old?

And I know we were all aware of this. I know what we're like.

We're too shy to talk about it, but at that precise moment on our journey, we knew.”
― Anna Gavalda, French Leave

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Work: A Story of Experience

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books.”
― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.”
― C.S. Lewis

“There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
― Alan Bennett, The History Boys

“but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
― Jane Austen

“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.”
― Adrienne Rich

“Each moment is a place
you've never been.”
― Mark Strand, New Selected Poems

“There’s so much I can’t read because I get so exasperated. Someone starts describing the character boarding the plane and pulling the seat back. And I just want to say, Babe, I have been downtown. I have been up in a plane. Give me some credit.”
― Amy Hempel

“Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?”
― Amy Hempel, The Dog of the Marriage: Stories

“I want to know everything about you, so I tell you everything about myself.”
― Amy Hempel

“Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.”
― Amy Hempel

“The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“Since his mother died I have seen him steam a cucumber thinking it was zucchini. That's the kind of thing that turns my heart right over.”
― Amy Hempel

“The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss—you have gone and lost something else. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How many children do you have? "Four," she will say, "—three," and years later, "Three," she will say, "—four.”
― Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories

“They say the smart dog obeys but the smarter dog knows when to disobey.”
― Amy Hempel

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
― Nora Ephron