Christie > Christie's Quotes

“Go and do, don't sit and stew.”
― John Bytheway

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“And I, Nephi, took one of the daughters of Ishmael to wife.' Well Mr. Go-And-Do just went and did!”
― John Bytheway

“With false names, on the right nets, they could be anybody. Old men, middle-aged women, anybody, as long as they were careful about the way they wrote. All that anyone would see were the words, their ideas. Every citizen started equal, on the nets.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“Our culture's quest to hide death behind a facade of denial has made fools and pretended immortals of us all. Perhaps it would be more helpful and liberating to begin each day by repeating the words of Crazy Horse, "Today is a good day to die.”
― Richard Paul Evans, A Step of Faith

“I was told love should be unconditional. That's the rule, everyone says so. But if love has no boundaries, no limits, no conditions, why should anyone try to do the right thing ever? If I know I am loved no matter what, where is the challenge? I am supposed to love Nick despite all his shortcomings. And Nick is supposed to love me despite my quirks. But clearly, neither of us does. It makes me think that everyone is very wrong, that love should have many conditions. Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Hell, at this point, I can’t imagine my story without Amy. She is my forever antagonist. We are one long frightening climax.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“O was infinitely more moving when her body was covered with marks, of whatever kind, if only because these marks made it impossible for her to cheat and immediately proclaimed, the moment they were seen, that anything went as far as she was concerned. For to know this was one thing, but to see the proof of it, and to see the proof constantly renewed, was quite another.”
― Pauline Reage

“We are chained to that which we do not forgive”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Locket

“Those with the softest hearts build the hardest shells.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Locket

“I believe it's after the honeymoon ends that true love begins. It's in the hard times that the greater virtues of love reveal themselves, like tolerance and patience and kindness.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Locket

“You want to know what hell is? What brimstone and burining really is?"
Yes"
Hell is the perfect recollection of every evil thing you've done in your life, every thoughtless word, every cruel, evil thought or action. It's knowing that you could have helped your brother and didn't. Hell is clarity, Bob. It's nothing more than clarity." He leaned forward as if to confide in me, his gaze intense. "Do you want to know what heaven is?"
I was locked into his gaze. "Yes."
His voice was barely above a whisper, "It's the same thing.”
― Richard Paul Evans, A Perfect Day

“To not extend forgiveness is to burn the bridge that we ourselves must cross.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Walk

“They say that time heals all wounds. But even as wounds heal they leave scars, token reminders of the pain.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Christmas Box

“So I've been thinking. Do you believe there's a hell?"
"Sure. Doesn't everybody?"
"Well, what if this is hell, but we just don't know it?"
"That's crazy. Hell is like lakes of fire, and there are devils with horns and pitchforks. here's none of those around here."
"But what if hell's not really like that?" Grace asked.
"Everyone says it's that way," I said.
"I don't think Jesus every talked about fire and brimstone."
"Then why do they teach us that at church?"
"To scare us."
"Why would they want to scare us?"
"I don't know. I just don't think God wants us to do good things because we're scared. I think he wants us to do good things because we're good.”
― Richard Paul Evans, Grace

“I've learned that the greatest threat to love is not circumstance but the absence of attentions. For we do not neglect others because we have ceased to love; rather we ceased to love others because we have neglected them. I've learned that each day is a miracle unearned. I've learned that while life is ephemeral-a vapor- LOVE is not. In short, I have learned what matters and what does not.”
― Richard Paul Evans, A Perfect Day

“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
― Emma Goldman

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?”
― C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe

“I will always speak the truth to you, Herb Asher," the boy continued. "There is no deceit in God. I want you to live. I made you live once before, when you lay in psychological death. God does not desire any living thing's death; God takes no delight in nonexistence. Do you know what God is, Herb Asher? God is He Who causes to be. Put another way, if you seek the basis of being that underlies everything you will surely find God. You can work back to God from the phenomenal universe, or you can move from the Creator to the phenomenal universe. Each implies the other. The Creator would not be the Creator if there were no universe, and the universe would cease to be if the Creator did not sustain it. The Creator does not exist prior to the universe in time; he does not exist in time at all. God creates the universe constantly; he is with it, not above or behind it. This is impossible to understand for you because you are a created thing and exist in time. But eventually you will return to your Creator and then you will again no longer exist in time. You are the breath of your Creator, and as he breathes in and out, you live. Remember that, for that sums up everything that you need to know about your God. There is first an exhalation from God, on the part of all creation; and then, at a certain point, it starts its journey back, its inhalation. This cycle never ceases. You leave me; you are away from me; you start back; you rejoin me. You and everything else. It is a process, an event. It is an activity - my activity. It is the rhythm of my own being, and it sustains you all.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Divine Invasion

“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”
― Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“I shall take the heart. [...] For brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“Ellen had said that her mother was afraid of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big. The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel. ”
― Lois Lowry, Number the Stars

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
― Winston Churchill, Never Give In! The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches

“And then Jack chopped down what was the world's last beanstalk, adding murder and ecological terrorism to the theft, enticement, and trespass charges already mentioned, and all the giant's children didn't have a daddy anymore. But he got away with it and lived happily ever after, without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done...which proves that you can be excused for just about anything if you are a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world.”
― Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost

“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”
― Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“The very rich are enormously resentful of bad weather. It is the one discomfort that their money cannot do anything about.”
― Roald Dahl, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

“Now, scholars can be very useful and necessary, in their own dull and unamusing way. They provide a lot of information. It's just that there is Something More, and that Something More is what life is really all about.
”
― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh