Mia > Mia's Quotes

“He can think now only of objects. Something alive, just one small grey bird on a branch, will break his heart.”
― Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“The first sentence of every novel should be: Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.”
― Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

“How little imagination and courage we show in our hatreds. If we earn fifty cents an hour, we admire the rich and pity the poor, and we reserve the full force of our venom for those who make a penny more or a penny less. That's why there isn't a revolution every ten years.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”
― Robert Frost

“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“I told him I'd always found the description a little too long on adjectives and a little too short on specifics.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“Most people have more needs than wants. That's why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.”
― Amor Towles

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

“Really. Is there anything nice to be said about other people's vacations? I balled up the letter and threw it in the trash.”
― 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

“As a quick aside, let me observe that in moments of high emotion....if the next thing you're going to say makes you feel better, then it's probably the wrong thing to say. This is one of the finer maxims that I've discovered in life. And you can have it, since it's been of no use to me.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“...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

“What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become. Later.. later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories. Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety. Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Discovering, for example, that as witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. [p. 65]”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Who was it said that memory is what we thought we'd forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent. But it's not convenient--it's not useful--to believe this; it doesn't help us get on with our lives; so we ignore it. [p. 69]”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Some admit the damage, and try to mitigate it; some spend their lives trying to help others who are damaged; and then there are those whose main concern is to avoid further damage to themselves, at whatever cost. And those are the ones who are ruthless, and the ones to be careful of.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“I've been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don't get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn't even true at the time - love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions - and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives - then I plead guilty.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“He thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“But you find yourself repeating, “They grow up so quickly, don’t they?” when all you really mean is: time goes faster for me nowadays.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Masters and parents used to remind us irritatingly that they too had once been young, and so could speak with authority. It's just a phase, they would insist. You'll grow out of it; life will teach you reality and realism. But back then we declined to acknowledge that they had ever been anything like us, and we knew that we grasped life--and truth, and morality, and art--far more clearly than our compromised elders.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Again, I must stress that this is my reading now of what happened then. Or rather, my memory now of my reading then of what was happening at the time.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“Perhaps there will be a slight streak of green, a patch that will deepen and then grow. Then another patch on the horizon, like a green searchlight. And then shivering curtains of light can fill the sky, or looping spirals, or flickering flames of green and purple, and candy-apple red. It feels as if they should be accompanied by dramatic sounds, the bangs of fireworks or the roars of rockets. But these are utterly silent, almost solemn in their dancing. And yet they can be comforting in their own way; as if in this remote and frozen wilderness there's something else out there that is alive.”
― Gabrielle Walker, Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of the World's Most Mysterious Continent

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.”
― John Williams, Stoner