Westminster Library > Westminster's Quotes

“Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.”
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

“We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.”
― Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man

“But the woman, the mother, she watches, she waits, she loves. And she bears the weight of that love. She bears the loss of her son to war. She bears the story of Manifest. When everyone else is crushed by it, by the loss, the pain. When no one else can bear to remember. She is the keeper of the story. Until someone who needs to hear it comes along. When it will be time to make it known. To manifest. That's what a diviner does.”
― Clare Vanderpool, Moon Over Manifest

“Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold . . .” The pillow seemed to sink a little, and Johnny died.”
― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“He had hoped to spot the flickering shadow of a murderer as he turned the file's pages, but instead it was the ghost of Lula herself who emerged, gazing up at him, as victims of violent crimes sometimes did, through the detritus of their interrupted lives.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling

“A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.”
― Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling

“Family. It was just a word…Could see its letters all strung together. But it was a symbol, too. And people thought they knew what it meant…It was a thing everyone had an opinion about—that it was all you had when you didn’t have anything else, that family was there, that blood was thicker than water, whatever. But when Nailer thought about it, most of these words and ideas just seemed like good excuses for people to behave badly and get away with it. Family wasn’t more reliable than marriages or friendships…maybe less…The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“We are none of us born into Eden," Doc said reasonably. "world's plenty evil when we get here. Question is, what's the best way to play a bad hand?"...”
― Mary Doria Russell, Doc

“The Georgian had used more words in 5 minutes than Wyatt had spoken during 1872 and 1873 combined.”
― Mary Doria Russell, Doc

“If you have ever met someone who rarely reads, then you will understand the blank look Moti gave me. For nonreaders, life is simply what they touch and see, not what they feel when they open the pages of a play and are transported to the Forest of Arden or Illyria. Where the world is full of a thousand colors for those who love books, I suspect it is simply black and gray to everyone else. A tree is a tree to them; it is never a magical doorway to another world populated with beings that don’t exist here.”
― Michelle Moran, Rebel Queen

“We can help pave the roads of those around us, but we can't choose their direction.”
― Michelle Moran, Rebel Queen

“There are only so many plots in the world. It's how they unfold that makes them interesting.”
― Lauren Beukes, The Shining Girls

“Next time, can you ask him to bring cookies? I don't like to put up with that level of insane unless there's some kind of high-calorie compensation.”
― Lauren Beukes, The Shining Girls

“Yes, of course duct tape works in a near-vacuum. Duct tape works anywhere. Duct tape is magic and should be worshiped.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“It’s true, you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“LOG ENTRY: SOL 381 I’ve been thinking about laws on Mars.

Yeah, I know, it’s a stupid thing to think about, but I have a lot of free time.

There’s an international treaty saying no country can lay claim to anything that’s not on Earth. And by another treaty, if you’re not in any country’s territory, maritime law applies.

So Mars is “international waters.”

NASA is an American nonmilitary organization, and it owns the Hab. So while I’m in the Hab, American law applies. As soon as I step outside, I’m in international waters. Then when I get in the rover, I’m back to American law.

Here’s the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli and commandeer the Ares 4 lander. Nobody explicitly gave me permission to do this, and they can’t until I’m aboard Ares 4 and operating the comm system. After I board Ares 4, before talking to NASA, I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission.

That makes me a pirate!

A space pirate!”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true.”
― Andy Weir, The Martian

“The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“It's not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“Reading is not optional.”
― Walter Dean Myers

“They have a saying, the French, that no woman, can be truly beautiful who is not also sometimes truly ugly.”
― Alexandra Ripley, Scarlett, Part 2

“I'd rather die on an adventure than live standing still.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“Lila Bard knew in her bones that she was meant to be a pirate.”
― Victoria Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“What’s the use of a clown who doesn’t subvert?”
― Kirsty Logan, The Gracekeepers

“Many ways to fly, but only one way to fall.”
― Kirsty Logan, The Gracekeepers

“There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extrovert.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“I'm a sheep wearing wolves' clothing in a pack of wolves.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising