Reader > Reader's Quotes

“I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Why am I always looking at life through a window?”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“There is no God and we are his prophets.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“When you die it's the same as if everybody else did too.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger

“After awhile you could get used to anything.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“It is better to burn than to disappear.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Do not be afraid of my words: a dead woman wants nothing more, she wants neither love nor pity nor consolation.”
― Stefan Zweig, Brief einer Unbekannten

“All I know is that I shall be alone again. There is nothing more terrible than to be alone among human beings.”
― Stefan Zweig, Letter from an Unknown Woman: The Fowler Snared

“No hay nada más terrible que estar sola cuando estás rodeada de gente.”
― Stefan Zweig, Brief einer Unbekannten

“Strange, how a moment of existence can cut so deeply into our being that while ages pass unnoticed, a brief love can structure and define the very topology of our consciousness ever after.”
― Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell

“Remember you are never really alone. Although it may feel like it for very long stretches of time.”
― Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell

“Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. In hope’s loss, however, is the greatest despair.”
― Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell

“Finite does not mean much if you can't tell any practical difference between it and infinite.”
― Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell

“There is a despair that goes deeper than existence; it runs to the marrow of consciousness, to the seat of the soul.”
― Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell

“But what worse fate could there be? To remember love and know it is unattainable?”
― Steven L. Peck, A Short Stay in Hell

“I never found out what happened to Chele, or to any of the countless others who were with me. I fear they died in the Sonoran Desert. This book is for them and for every immigrant who has crossed, who has tried to, who is crossing right now, and who will keep trying.”
― Javier Zamora, Solito

“My hope for this book is that somehow it will reunite me with Chino, Patricia, and Carla, that I will find out what happened to them after we separated and learn what their lives have been like in this country. I don't believe I ever thanked them. I want to thank them now, as an adult, for risking their lives for a nine-year-old they did not know.”
― Javier Zamora, Solito

“Sometimes I wish I could forget what’s been happening. Then I remember that’s what I’m most afraid of.”
― Naomi Salman, Nothing but the Rain

“We all subsist on each other’s mistakes, darling. They are the atoms of our own success.”
― Naomi Salman, Nothing but the Rain

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Being beautiful, was that for men?'
'Yes. Some women say that it is for ourselves. What on earth can we do with it? I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Sometimes, I used to sit under the sky, on a clear night, and gaze at the stars, saying, in my croaky voice: “Lord, if you’re up there somewhere, and you aren’t too busy, come and say a few words to me, because I’m very lonely and it would make me so happy.” Nothing happened. So I reckon that humanity— which I wonder whether I belong to —really had a very vivid imagination.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men