Anthony > Anthony's Quotes

“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“Gloucester:
Why dost thou spit at me?

Lady Anne:
Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake!

Gloucester:
Never came poison from so sweet a place.

Lady Anne:
Never hung poison on a fouler toad.”
― William Shakespeare

“But there is nothing enduring in this world, and that is why even joy is not as keen in the moment that follows the first; and a moment later it grows weaker still and finally merges imperceptibly into one's usual state of mind, just as a ring on the water, made by the fall of a pebble, merges finally into the smooth surface.”
― Nikolai Gogol, The Nose

“I'm 65 years old. Everyday the future looks a little bit darker. But the past, even the grimy parts of it, well, it just keeps on getting brighter all the time.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“After all,” I thought, “if life is ALWAYS getting worse, then right now is NEVER all bad?”

A happy thought that served me well…”
― Dan Slott, Arkham Asylum: Living Hell

“The minister is a Congregationalist, and wears a white shirt. The man knows God. Once, in the middle of the long pastoral prayer of intercession for the whole world---for the gift of wisdom to its leaders, for hope and mercy to the grieving and pained, succor to the oppressed, and God's grace to all---in the middle of this he stopped, and burst out, "Lord, we bring you these same petitions every week." After a shocked pause, he continued reading the prayer. Because of this, I like him very much.”
― Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

“He punctuated this last thought with such a deep sigh that a house sparrow singing near by stopped and rushed home to be with his family.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“We had a wretched singer once, a guest from a Canadian congregation, a hulking blond girl with chopped hair and big shoulders, who wore tinted spectacles and a long lacy dress, and sang, grinning to faltering accompaniment, an entirely secular song about mountains. Nothing could have been more apparent than that God loved this girl...”
― Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

“The higher Christian churches--where, if anywhere, I belong--come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect in any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

“If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.”
― Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

“Faith would be that God is self-limited utterly by his creation---a contraction of the scope of his will; that he bound himself to time and its hazards and haps as a man would lash himself to a tree for love. That God's works are as good as we make them.”
― Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“At the time, I often thought that if I had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowering overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it. I would have waited for birds to fly by or clouds to mingle, just as here I waited to see my lawyer's ties and just as, in another world, I used to wait patiently until Saturday to hold Marie's body in my arms.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I never really had a son. ... God didn't grant me so much as a nest to raise a child in. Just a long, drawn-out life during which my sorrowful eyes searched here and there...”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.”
― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

“The rain began spilling from the clouds with greater intensity until, off in the distance, over wehere the sun had started to rise, the sky closed back up, and the night that was beginning to recede seemed to return. The main gate at the Media Luna groaned as it swung open, soaked by the wet breeze.”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“The sparrows would laugh, pecking at the leaves that the wind pushed to the ground, then they would laugh again. They would abandon feathers among the thorny branches and chase after butterflies and laugh some more. It was that time of year.”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“The sea soaks my ankles and then recedes, it soaks my knees, then my thighs; it wraps its tender arm around my waist and caresses my breasts; it embraces my neck and presses against my shoulders. I immerse myself in the sea, fully. I give myself over to its steady force, its gentle possession, holding nothing back”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“I asked Thee to protect him. To look after him. That's all I asked for. But all Thou carest for is the soul. And what I want from him is the body. Naked and warmed by love, simmering with desire, massaging the trembling of my arms and breasts. My transparent body suspended by his. My slender frame supported by and lost in his strength. What am I to do with my lips now when I don't have his mouth to occupy them? What am I to do with my aching lips?”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“When she first crossed the dry and dusty world which his mind inhabited she had been like a spring shower; in opening himself to it he had not been mistaken. He had gone wrong only in assuming that marriage, by itself, gave him either power or title to appropriate that freshness. As he now saw, one might as well have thought one could buy a sunset by buying the field from which one had seen it.”
― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

“-Is it true that the night is full of sin, Justina?
-Yes, Susana.
-For certain it's true?
-It must be, Susana.
-And what do you think life is, Justina, if not sin?”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“Do you believe in hell, Justina?"
"Yes, Susana. And in heaven, too."
"I only believe in hell, " said Susana.”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“Outside, the sun was crackling.”
― Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo

“I don't know if you have known anybody from that far back, if you have loved anybody that long, first as an infant, then as a child, then as a man. You gain a strange perspective on time and human pain and effort.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between "literally" and "figuratively." If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening.

If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means you are so happy that you could jump for joy, but are saving your energy for other matters.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning