Liz > Liz's Quotes

“There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“I can't explain that, except to say there's release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is. You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there's nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it. Then, at least, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as
the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

“Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence. I can understand a wrathful God who'd just as soon dangle us all from a hook. And I can understand a tender, unprejudiced Jesus. But I could never quite feature the two of them living in the same house. You wind up walking on eggshells, never knowing which... is at home at the moment.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.”
― Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

“The very concept of sin comes from the Bible. Christianity offers to solve a problem of its own making! Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?”
― Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist

“Atheists/agnostics scored an average of 6.7 out of 12 on questions specifically regarding the Bible and Christianity. This is a higher score than (Protestant) Christians (6.2) and Catholics (5.4).”
― Pew Report

“The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors--psychology, sociology, women's studies--to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view.”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer

“People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“The most difficult thing to read is time. Maybe because it changes so many things.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Mothers are all slightly insane.”
― J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“All my life I've thought I needed someone to complete me, now I know I need to belong to myself.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair

“Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.”
― Anonymous

“Then I started crying for it seemed to me then that life is nothing but people leaving.”
― Lee Smith, Fair and Tender Ladies

“Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.”
― Daniel Woodrell, Winter's Bone

“We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.”
― Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“The researchers concluded that during intercourse in the missionary position, the penis “has the shape of a boomerang.”
― Mary Roach, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

“You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Sorrow is so woven through us, so much a part of our souls, or at least any understanding of our souls that we are able to attain, that every experience is dyed with its color. This is why, even in moments of joy, part of that joy is the seams of ore that are our sorrow. They burn darkly and beautifully in the midst of joy, and they make joy the complete experience that it is. But they still burn.”
― Christian Wiman

“I prefer a story to a prayer.”
― Hannah Kent, Burial Rites

“It's a lie. Man has created God out of fear of dying.”
― Hannah Kent, Burial Rites