Jayne > Jayne's Quotes

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.”
― William Styron, Conversations with William Styron

“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I don't believe I deserved my friends.”
― Walt Whitman

“Every artist was first an amateur.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“You might as well answer the door, my child,
the truth is furiously knocking.”
― Lucille Clifton, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
― Mark Twain

“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn't know it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Jesper: “If Pekka Rollins kills us all, I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.”
Kaz: “I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.”
Matthias: “My ghost won’t associate with your ghost.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“He envied this in them, this ability they had to still be awestruck, the faith they maintained that life, adulthood, would keep presenting them with astonishing experiences, that their marvellous years were not behind them.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I love you," he calls to them, and they shout it back at him, all of them at once, although even in their chorus, he can still distinguish each individual voice.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“His dark eyes had turned that same unnamable gray that only the very young or the very old possess: the color of the sea from which one comes, the color of the sea to which one returns.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I used to think you were a good-for-nothing book reader.”
― Louis Sachar, Holes

“We don't laugh at people's dreams. Someone is going to have to train monkeys for the movies.”
― Louis Sachar, Holes

“People die and maybe they leave something behind, a wristwatch or a ring or a set of silver tableware, but none of that means anything without the story. It's what keeps us here after we're gone, and we're only truly dead when those who know our stores are also dead.”
― Sarah Leipciger, Coming Up for Air

“And she was happy again, by the end of her life, I want you to know that, because despair - because loss - can turn into a thing that is precious and beautiful; it can grow into something you cherish, a part of the stronger person you have become”
― Sarah Leipciger, Coming Up for Air

“Because I am enough. My heart is enough. The stories and the sentences twisting around my mind are enough. I am fizzing and frothing and buzzing and exploding. I'm bubbling over and burning up. My early-morning walks and my late-night baths are enough. My loud laugh at the pub is enough. My piercing whistle, my singing in the shower, my double-jointed toes are enough. I am a just-pulled pint with a good, frothy head on it. I am my own universe; a galaxy; a solar system. I am the warm-up act, the main event, and the backing singers. And if this is it, if this is all there is- just me and the trees and the sky and the seas- I know now that that's enough.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“It is futile and knackering to try and make all your tiny choices representative of your moral compass then beat yourself up when this plan inevitably fails. Feminists can get waxed. Priests can swear. Vegetarians can wear leather shoes. Do as much good as you can. The weighty representation of the world cannot rest on every decision you make.”
― Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

“Seeing someone with their parents is a tangible reminder that we're all composites.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“Nothing wakes me up like a laugh, really, even just one big laugh, as long as it's sincere. It's better than caffeine.”
― Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

“The things we do to avoid difficult things are often worse than the difficult thing.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, Last Night