Carrie > Carrie's Quotes

“If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can't see how beautiful it really is.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not. A sense of humour was provided to console him for what he is.”
― Horace Walpole

“I must be very selfish, she thought, for I want to set nothing and no one right; all I want is to be left in peace to make what I can of this problem called life for myself and my children.”
― R.A. Dick, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“Rebellion flamed up in her soul as the dark hours passed by – not because she had no future but because she had no past.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss

“And that's where the whole trouble is. We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by; and in the same way people are specialized by their dislikes and antagonisms, whilst their goodwill is looked upon as no attribute at all.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“And, she thought uncomfortably, what would happen if people did not recognize you? Would you know who you were yourself? If tomorrow they started to call her Vanessa or Janet or Elizabeth, would she know how to be, how to feel like, Charlotte? Were you some particular person only because people recognized you as that?”
― Penelope Farmer, Charlotte Sometimes

“The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives...”
― Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

“I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I guess my question is: Is the new you the stranger? Or is the stranger the person you leave behind?" -Sherm”
― Rebecca Stead, Goodbye Stranger

“As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.”
― Andrew Marvell, The Complete Poems

“Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

“My imagination longs to dash ahead and plan developments; but I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”
― Pablo Neruda, Love: Ten Poems

“Mary, you know I hate parties. My idea of hell is a very large party in a cold room where everybody has to play hockey properly.”
― Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm

“If there's one thing I learned from Rodrick, it's to set people's expectations real low so you end up surprising them by practically doing nothing at all.”
― Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid

“How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“See, when you mess something up, you learn for the next time. It's when people compliment you that you're in trouble. That means they expect you to keep it up.”
― Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

“His mother is having treatments by Dr. Froyd...it is quite hard for Dr. Froyd, because she cannot seem to remember which is a dream and which really happened to her. So she tells him everything, and he has to use his judgement. I mean when she tells him that a very very handsome young gentleman tried to flirt with her on Fifth Avenue, he uses his judgment.”
― Anita Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

“Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us deep down. It's our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of.”
― David Foster Wallace

“The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.”
― Horace Walpole

“I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?'
'Cats don't have names,' it said.
'No?' said Coraline.
'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline