Adrienne > Adrienne's Quotes

“When we change the way we communicate, we change society”
― Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

“What you do matters — but not much. What you are matters tremendously.”
― Catherine Doherty

“The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'
'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.
'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.”
― H.G. Wells, The Time Machine

“He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I ask not for any crown
But that which all may win;
Nor try to conquer any world
Except the one within.”
― Louisa May Alcott

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Laurie, you're an angel! How shall I ever thank you?"
"Fly at me again. I rather liked it," said Laurie, looking
mischievous, a thing he had not done for a fortnight.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“It doesn't matter that you didn't believe in us," said Mr. Ibis. "We believed in you.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods: Tenth Anniversary

“...the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain

“And [he] sailed back over a year
and in and out of weeks
and through a day
and into the night of his very own room
where he found his supper waiting for him
and it was still hot”
― Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are

“Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

No ... eight days a week.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?”
― Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It was missing a piece.
And it was not happy.
So it set off in search
of its missing piece.
And as it rolled
it sang this song - "Oh I'm lookin' for my missin' piece
I'm lookin' for my missin' piece
Hi-dee-ho, here I go,
Lookin' for my missin' piece.”
― shel silverstein

“What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.”
― A.S. Byatt

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Lascelles threw himself into the carriage, snorting with laughter and saying that he had never in his life heard of anything so ridiculous and comparing their snug drive through the London streets in Mr. Norrell's carriage to ancient French and Italian fables where fools set sail in milk-pails to fetch the moon's reflection from the bottom of a duckpond...”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

“The vocation of every man and woman is to serve people. ”
― Leo Tolstoy

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you can be fierce and original in your work.”
― Gustave Flaubert

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

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound. ”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces