MiuMaO > MiuMaO's Quotes

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“... a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.”
― Stephen King

“Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.”
― Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”
― Mortimer J. Adler

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“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

“Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?”
― Christopher Paolini

“Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

“it is hard to argue that housing is not a fundamental human need. Decent, affordable housing should be a basic right for everybody in this country. The reason is simple: without stable shelter, everything else falls apart.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Our cities have become unaffordable to our poorest families, and this problem is leaving a deep and jagged scar on our next generation.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“That’s because language doesn’t work to manipulate people into believing things they don’t want to believe; instead, it gives them license to believe ideas they’re already open to. Language—both literal and figurative, well-intentioned and ill-intentioned, politically correct and politically incorrect—reshapes a person’s reality only if they are in an ideological place where that reshaping is welcome.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“It’s not that smart people aren’t capable of believing in cultish things; instead, says Shermer, it’s that smart people are better at “defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“words are the medium through which belief systems are manufactured, nurtured, and reinforced, their fanaticism fundamentally could not exist without them.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“There’s a reason most religions encourage prayer: Language strengthens beliefs.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“Unlike the cults of the ‘70s, we don’t even have to leave the house for a charismatic figure to take hold of us. With contemporary cults, the barrier to entry if the simple frisson of tapping Follow.”
― Amanda Montell, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“These books can't possibly compete with centuries of established history, especially when that history is endorsed by the ultimate bestseller of all time."
Faukman's eyes went wide. "Don't tell me Harry Potter is actually about the Holy Grail."
"I was referring to the Bible."
Faukman cringed. "I knew that.”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“By its very nature, history is always a one-sided account.”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel.”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code