Grace > Grace's Quotes

“I had grown accustomed to my station here.
Enduring it as if lost in a dream.
But today, my eyes have been opened.
Today, I awake.
Too long have I suffered adversity.
Pain from the actions of those entrusted with protecting me.
Forging on, my past shall not define me, even as I stand afeard a resurgence of my true vulnerabilities.
The time has come at last to abandon this isle.
To depart, never to return.
Fare thee well, O home.
Wait for my return no longer.
Onward I must proceed with strength in each footfall
Evermore haunted with the memories of the man I used to be.
For my old home is now behind me.
Faith is my new home.”
― Sophocles

“Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
You forget some things, dont you?
Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“...be careful when choosing what you're proud of--because the world has every intention of using it against you.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us...then there wouldn't be so much fuss about love in the first place.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“That's the problem with living in New York. You've got no New York to run away to.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Right from the first, I could see a calmness in you - that sort of inner tranquility that they write about in books, but that almost no one seems to possess. I was wondering to myself: How does she do that? And I figured it could only come from having no regrets - from having made choices with .... such poise and purpose.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You've carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are - cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Old times, as my father used to say: If you're not careful, they'll gut you like a fish.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“For however inhospitable the wind, from this vantage point Manhattan was simply so improbable, so wonderful, so obviously full of promise - that you wanted to approach it for the rest of your life without ever quite arriving.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“It is a bit of a cliché to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time--by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still?

In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions--we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made shape our lives for decades to come.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“I think most people feel a difference between their real lives and the lives they have in the world. But they ignore their souls, or hide them, so they can keep things together, keep an ordinary life together. You don’t do that. In your own way, you’re kind of—pure.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Jack

“...feeling that old thrill of dread and compulsion, he knew circumstances had once again put him too close to a fragile thing. He said, "Look at the life we live, Della. I have to sneak over here in the dark just to steal a few words with you. Is that language, or is it noise?"

She said, "It's noise that you have to do it, and language that you do it, anyway." She said softly, "Maybe poetry.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Jack

“Those who can't hope can still wish.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Jack

“Forever after, the thought of her would be painful, because it had been pleasant. Strange how that is.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Jack

“There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well, until one morning you’re picking cherries with your three grown daughters and your husband goes by on the Gator and you are positive that this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

“The stories that are familiar will always be our favorites.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

“But, however much life teaches you that nothing lasts, it is still a shock when it disappears. When the man you love with every fibre starts returning to the stars, an atom at a time.”
― Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die

“We think time travels forward, marches on in a straight line, and so we alongside it to keep up. Hurry, hurry, mustn't fall behind. But it doesn't, you see. Time just swirls around us. Every thing is always present. The things we've done, the people we've loved, the people we've hurt, they're all still here?”
― Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die

“Had she really understood then that those were the best of times? That she was in heaven? She thinks she did understand, yes. Understood she had been given a great gift. Doing the crossword in a train carriage, Stephen with a can of beer ("I will only drink beer on trains, nowhere else, don't ask me why"), glasses halfway down his nose, reading out clues. The real secret was that when they looked at each other, they each thought they had the better deal.”
― Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die

“What is it about Christmas? Everything that’s wrong seems worse, and everything that’s right seems better.”
― Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die

“I don’t know why we’re on this earth,” says Stephen. “Truly I don’t. But if I wanted to find the answer, I would begin with how much I love you.”
― Richard Osman, The Last Devil to Die

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

“Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray