Liz > Liz's Quotes

“Some of these things are true and some of them lies. But they are all good stories.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Art thrives in times of uncertainty.”
― Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles

“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“Its hard to be a diamond in a rhinestone world.”
― Dolly Parton

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
― Mark Twain

“I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even put a stopper on death.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“Everywhere man blames nature and fate yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passion, his mistakes and his weaknesses.”
― Democritus

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

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.

It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Your problem, Werner,” says Frederick, “is that you still believe you own your life.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“...the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.”
― Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

“Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.”
― Ransom Riggs, Hollow City

“There are thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“That's the thing that always stuck out to me - the idea that quantity becomes quality. I always took it to mean if you do anything enough, if you keep putting effort in, eventually something will happen, with or without you. You don't have to have faith when you start out, you just have to dedicate yourself to practice as if you have it.”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe

“You may be sensitive inside, but what I see on the outside is a soldier.”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe

“We're all working hard, but so far away from what we actually want to be doing. We're all peering in at the window of a party we aren't invited to yet, a party we wouldn't know how to dress for, or what kind of conversation to make, even if we came as someone's guest.”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe

“Over and over in the play my character says, "I'm thirty-two years old," as if that should explain everything that's wrong in her life. I don't know what it's like to be thirty-two, but I can imagine. I imagine she means she's stuck in an in-between time, she's at an age that isn't a milestone but more of a no-man's-land, an age where she's feeling like her hopes are fading.”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe

“I'd pay more just to hear proper English and have everyone keep their clothes on”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe

“Maybe the trick is for me to always be in some sort of disguise, to always be dressed to play someone else. Only then can I really appreciate myself.”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe

“Don’t tell stories of a job you almost got. Learn from a loss and don’t dwell on it. Move on.’ ”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe

“FASTER—don’t talk down to the audience, take us for a spin, don’t spell everything out for us, we’re as smart as you—assume we can keep up; FUNNIER—entertain us, help us see how ridiculous and beautiful life can be, give us a reason to feel better about our flaws; LOUDER—deliver the story in the appropriate size, DON’T be indulgent or keep it to yourself, be generous—you’re there to reach US.” Barney takes a few gulps of air and beats his fist just once on his chest. “There you go, my dear. It might SOUND simple, but if I know you, you’ll spend your life dedicated to getting it right. And that’s it, my dear. THAT’S the whole banana.”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe

“It feels like I’m an actor in an Italian movie from the ’60s, saying the placeholder lines into the camera, waiting for the real ones that come later.”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe

“I have to introduce the part of me that feels like a winner to the part of me convinced I'm a loser, and see if they can't agree to exist somewhere closer to the middle.”
― Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe