Julia > Julia 's Quotes

“The hairstyle that was chosen would impact how everyone—every filmgoing human—would envision me for the rest of my life. (And probably even beyond—it’s hard to imagine any TV obituary not using a photo of that cute little round-faced girl with goofy buns on either side of her inexperienced head.)”
― Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

“If I were at any time to set out on a career of deceit, it would be of Miss Marple that I should be afraid.”
― Agatha Christie

“Looking back, I have to laugh. You know why Martin Bligh was strenuous? Whenever I didn't know what to write next, I put a swift river in front of his horse and sent the two of them across!”
― Leif Enger

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Still in my coat and hat, I sank onto the stair to read the letter. (I never read without making sure I am in a secure position. I have been like this ever since the age of seven when, sitting on a high wall and reading The Water Babies, I was so seduced by the descriptions of underwater life that I unconsciously relaxed my muscles. Instead of being held buoyant by the water that so vividly surrounded me in my mind, I plummeted to the ground and knocked myself out. I can still feel the scar under my fringe now. Reading can be dangerous.)”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“It's one of the things I like about being in France, it brings out the best in me, and always surprises me-and even when I think it won't be good for me, it is.”
― Mark Greenside

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“....we ain't doing civil rights here. We just telling stories like they really happen.”
― Kathryn Stockett

“I've become one of those people who prowl around at night in their cars. God, I am the town's Boo Radley, just like in To Kill A Mockingbird.”
― Kathryn Stockett

“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

“If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one's self is like the heat in an oven. It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.”
― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“After all, reading is arguably a far more creative and imaginative process than writing; when the reader creates emotion in their head, or the colors of the sky during the setting sun, or the smell of a warm summer's breeze on their face, they should reserve as much praise for themselves as they do for the writer - perhaps more.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

“What's with the "iMagic" name change?' I said without preamble.
'Industrial Magic was a bit of a mouthful,' he explained. 'Besides, putting an "i"in front of anything makes it more hip and current.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Song of the Quarkbeast

“Stories are people. I'm a story, you're a story...your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, and for awhile, we're less alone.”
― Jess Walter

“If prayer flew as quickly as gossip, all the saints in heaven could not keep up with it.”
― James R. Benn, Death's Door

“Librarying is a harder profession than the public realizes, he said. People think it's all rubber stamps, knowing that Dewey 521 is celestial mechanics and saying 'Try looking under fiction' sixty eight times a day.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Woman Who Died A Lot

“...this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“How could people live someplace that so obviously didn't want them? All that romance about snow and seasons… You shouldn't have to make a special effort not to die every time you left your house.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Landline

“They do not comprehend where they are going," Kaz said, whispering his words to the wind.
I knew he didn't mean a particular place. There were no map coordinates to mark the location. He meant that point in time and space where bullet meets bone, where grown men cry rivers of tears; the point you can never return from, even if you live to be ninety.”
― James R. Benn

“Oh, please. Everyone in this town always says that, like you have to be born here to understand things. I understand plenty. You're only as weird as you want to be.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“Are all our dates going to be like that?" said Perkins.
"I hope not", I replied with a smile, "but it was quite fun, wasn't it? I mean, it's not like we were killed or eaten or anything, right?"
"If your idea of a good date is not being killed and eaten, you'll never be disappointed.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Eye of Zoltar

“I’d been an idiot to think that this was anything but a quest. Searches were nice and soft and cuddly and no one need be killed. A quest always demanded the death of a trusted colleague and one or more difficult dilemmas. I’d been in denial. I’d been a fool.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Eye of Zoltar

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“I don’t need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.”
― Ray Bradbury

“She looked like a whisper made real.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August