Jill > Jill's Quotes

“Never laugh at live dragons.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes.”
― James Joyce

“Books. Cats. Life is Good.”
― Edward Gorey

“We take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.”
― Cynthia Ozick

“We are each the authors of our own lives, Emma. We live in what we have created. There is no way to shift the blame and no one else to accept the accolades.”
― Barbara Taylor Bradford, A Woman of Substance

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

“I am so far from being a pessimist...on the contrary, in spite of my scars, I am tickled to death at life.”
― Eugene O'Neill

“Cherish your wilderness.”
― Maxine Kumin

“A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful.”
― Maurice Sendak

“Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.”
― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

“Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.”
― Pauline Kael

“It was always the view of my parents...that hot weather encouraged loose morals among young people.”
― Ian McEwan

“may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back”
― Lucille Clifton

“My little old dog
a heart-beat
at my feet”
― Edith Wharton

“Probably one of the most private things in the world is an egg before it is broken.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

“Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.”
― O. Henry

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“The world is like that -- incomprehensible and full of surprises .”
― Jorge Amado, Gabriela, clavo y canela

“You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.”
― Annie Proulx

“There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.”
― Janet Frame

“Keep on truckin'”
― R. Crumb

“It isn't ever delicate to live.”
― Kay Ryan

“Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.”
― W.S. Merwin

“Cats are connoisseurs of comfort.”
― James Herriot, James Herriot's Cat Stories

“I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.”
― Rick Moody

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
― Carl Sagan