Patricia > Patricia's Quotes

“Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.”
― Amy Joy

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
― Terry Pratchett

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

“Writing is a struggle against silence.”
― Carlos Fuentes

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Be careful of love. It'll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong.”
― Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
― Dorothy Parker

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect.”
― George R.R. Martin

“Love conquers all," Aphrodite promised. "Look at Helen and Paris. Did they let anything come between them?"
"Didn't they start the Trojan War and get thousands of people killed?"
"Pfft. That's not the point. Follow your heart.”
― Rick Riordan, The Titan’s Curse

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“nothing in this world was more difficult than love.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

“Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“It is thanks to my evening reading alone that I am still more or less sane.”
― W.G. Sebald, Vertigo

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

“Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.”
― Markus Zusak

“A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I think perhaps we want a more conscious life.”
― Sinclair Lewis

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

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
― Stephen King

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“After all, tomorrow is another day!”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Once upon a time, there was a girl who talked to the moon. And she was mysterious and she was perfect, in that way that girls who talk to moons are. In the house next door, there lived a boy. And the boy watched the girl grow more and more perfect, more and more beautiful with each passing year. He watched her watch the moon. And he began to wonder if the moon would help him unravel the mystery of the beautiful girl. So the boy looked into the sky. But he couldn't concentrate on the moon. He was too distracted by the stars. And it didn't matter how many songs or poems had already been written about them, because whenever he thought about the girl, the stars shone brighter. As if she were the one keeping them illuminated.

One day, the boy had to move away. He couldn't bring the girl with him, so he brought the stars. When he'd look out his window at night, he would start with one. One star. And the boy would make a wish on it, and the wish would be her name.

At the sound of her name, a second star would appear. And then he'd wish her name again, and the stars would double into four. And four became eight, and eight became sixteen, and so on, in the greatest mathematical equation the universe had ever seen. And by the time an hour had passed, the sky would be filled with so many stars that it would wake the neighbors. People wondered who'd turned on the floodlights.

The boy did. By thinking about the girl.”
― Stephanie Perkins, Lola and the Boy Next Door