Leah > Leah's Quotes

“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’
Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I suppose the shock of recognition is one of the nastiest shocks of all.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“. . . We'd done our errands, not to mention an awful lot of cocaine in the parking lot of Burger King . . .”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Cubitum eamus?"
"What?"
"Nothing.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“It was a wonderful night, such a night as is only possible when we are young, dear reader.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“Where have you buried your best days? Have you lived or not? Look, one
says to oneself, look how cold the world is growing.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

“but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
― Jane Austen

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I was quiet, but I was not blind.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“Suffering derives from attachment to things outside of our control
Walk on your broken foot and leave no trace of your hand on anyone’s shoulder”
― Dostoevskij Fedor Mikhajlovich

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way - or always to have it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Where you tend a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”
― Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Juvenile Fiction, Classics, Family

“Might I," quavered Mary, "might I have a bit of earth?”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“There's naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o' fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“...why does he so love his own four walls...”
― Fyodor Dostoyevosky

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring