Tamara > Tamara's Quotes

“You make a life out of what you have, not what you're missing.”
― Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

“It was a tale well known to children all over Africa: Abu Kassem, a miserly Baghdad merchant, had held on to his battered, much repaired pair of slippers even though they were objects of derision. At last, even he couldn't stomach the sight of them. But his every attempt to get rid of his slippers ended in disaster: when he tossed them out of his window they landed on the head of a pregnant woman who miscarried, and Abu Kassem was thrown in jail; when he dropped them in the canal, the slippers choked off the main drain and caused flooding, and off Abu Kassem went to jail...

'One night when Tawfiq finished, another prisoner, a quiet dignified old man, said, 'Abu Kassem might as well build a special room for his slippers. Why try to lose them? He'll never escape.' The old man laughed, and he seemed happy when he said that. That night the old man died in his sleep.

We all saw it the same way. the old man was right. The slippers in the story mean that everything you see and do and touch, every seed you sow, or don't sow, becomes part of your destiny...

In order to start to get rid of your slippers, you have to admit they are yours, and if you do, then they will get rid of themselves.

Ghosh sighed. 'I hope one day you see this as clearly as I did in Kerchele. The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“When you handle books all day long, every new one is a friend and a temptation.”
― Elizabeth Kostovia, The Historian

“Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.”
― Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

“To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.”
― Geraldine Brooks, March

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
― Joan Powers, Pooh's Little Instruction Book

“Becoming a child again is what is impossible. That's what you have a legitimate reason to be upset over. Childhood is the most valuable thing that's taken away from you in life, if you think about it.”
― Heather O'Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals

“There's no going back. So we might as well get on with things.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

“Talking to Clarence can be like talking to a child, although it is much more charming in children.”
― Diane Schoemperlen, In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters

“Much of what she found charming and refreshing about him at the outset of their relationship now bugged the hell out of her.”
― Diane Schoemperlen, In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters

“She thought she would do something with them someday, although she could not have said what and in fact she never did.”
― Diane Schoemperlen, In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters

“Did she really remember that day so clearly or was she making it up as she went along?”
― Diane Schoemperlen, In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters

“Joanna has an unmanageable lump in her throat and wonders why it's always the happy memories that make her cry.”
― Diane Schoemperlen, In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters

“It begins to dawn on her that she is lackadaisical about other people. They are tremendously important to her for a time and then they are not. She begins to see her life in sections, as separate pockets of time and affiliation.”
― Diane Schoemperlen, In the Language of Love: A Novel in 100 Chapters

“Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“Love so strong, without ebb and flow or crests and troughs, indeed lacking any sort of motion so that it had become invisible to him these seven years, part of the order of things outside his head which he had taken for granted.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life... As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“Impending death had a way of unexpectedly unearthing the past so that it came together with the present in an unholy coupling.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“How beautiful and horrible life is, Hema thought; too horrible to simply call tragic. Life is worse than tragic." p 108”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“How we treat the least of our brethren,... that's the measure of this country.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“He had so many ways of climbing into the tree house in his head, escaping the madness below, and pulling the ladder up behind him...”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“I spent as much time as I could with Ghosh. I wanted every bit of wisdom he could impart to me. All sons should write down every word of what their fathers have to say to them. I tried. Why did it take an illness for me to recognize the value of time with him? It seems we humans never learn. And so we relearn the lesson every generation and then want to write epistles. We proselytize to our friends and shake them by the shoulders and tell them, "Seize the day! What matters is THIS moment!" Most of us can't go back and make restitution. We can't do a thing about our should haves and our could haves. But a few lucky men like Ghosh never have such worries; there was no restitution he needed to make, no moment he failed to seize.

Now and then Ghosh would grin and wink at me across the room. He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“I realized if something happens to him, it happens to me, too. If I love myself, I love him, for we are one. That makes it a risk worth taking for me - it wouldn't be for anyone else, unless they loved him.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.”
― Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone

“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

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“I loved him right away," she said. "Almost on sight. Some things are so obvious when you look at them. And when that happens there isn't any choice.”
― Gil Adamson, The Outlander

“Sometimes Discontent is unknown to the sufferer, a shadowed thing that creeps up from behind. It had been that way for Mary. Of course she knew there were reasons for her unhappiness, there are always reasons. One thinks, I am unhappy, I am discontent, because of this or that. But such thoughts are like a painting of sorrow, not sorrow itself. Then one day it comes, hushed and ferocious, and reasons don’t matter anymore.” - The Outlander by Gil Adamson”
― Gil Adamson