Rachel > Rachel's Quotes

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“But in good time you'll see that sometimes what matters isn't what one gives but what one gives up.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Those were the words she wanted to hear and she finally surrendered to the temptation of believing them.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Prisoner of Heaven

“Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Talent must be a fanatical mistress. She's beautiful; when you're with her, people watch you, they notice. But she bangs on your door at odd hours, and she disappears for long stretches, and she has no patience for the rest of your existence; your wife, your children, your friends. She is the most thrilling evening of your week, but some day she will leave you for good. One night, after she's been gone for years, you will see her on the arm of a younger man, and she will pretend not to recognize you.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“a grey wrinkled vastness, like the residue of a dream”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“But in a way you can say that after leaving the sea, after all those millions of years of living inside of the sea, we took the ocean with us. When a woman makes a baby, she gives it water, inside her body, to grow in. That water inside her body is almost exactly the same as the water of the sea. It is salty, by just the same amount. She makes a little ocean, in her body. And not only this. Our blood and our sweating, they are both salty, almost exactly like the water from the sea is salty. We carry oceans inside of us, in our blood and our sweat. And we are crying the oceans, in our tears.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“The worst thing would be to decide that it was love, and then to discover - after one was taken - that it hadn't been. No: the worst thing would be to decide that it wasn't love, and then to discover years later - old and unconsoled - that it had been. No: the worst thing - the worst, worst thing - was this having to decide.”
― Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven

“The eye may be an obligate scout but the heart is not an incurable folllower.”
― Chris Cleave, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven

“Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of any body else.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“All great and precious things are lonely.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“We live in a world of disposable memory, nothing's built to last, not even shame.”
― Dennis Lehane, Since We Fell

“A line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart's invisible furies on his face.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“When one embraces a moment of rapture from the past, either by trying to reclaim it or by refusing to let it go, how can its brightness not tarnish, turn grey with longing and sorrow, until the wild spell of the remembered interlude is lost altogether and the memory of sadness claims its rightful place in the mind? And what is it we expect from the sun-drenched past? There is no formula for re-entry, nothing we can do to enable reconstruction.”
― Jane Urquhart, The Stone Carvers

“There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.”
― Margaret Atwood , MaddAddam

“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”
― Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

“Remember me, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“I believe that nothing happens by chance. Deep down, things have their own secret plan, even though we don't understand it .”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Reason is no match for desire: when desire is purely and powerfully felt, it becomes a kind of reason of its own.”
― Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

“She had never entirely let go of the notion that if she reached far enough with her thoughts she might find someone waiting, that if two people were to cast their thoughts outward at the same moment they might somehow meet in the middle.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay" we say. "I'm alright". But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can't get it off. That's when you realize that sometimes it isn't even an answer--it's a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“This was the way it was going to be then, this road she was going to have to walk. She would always be thinking of him so that he would be beside her even when he wasn't there, making her joyous or miserable, but always, always controlling the colour of her days.”
― Jane Urquhart , The Stone Carvers

“I don't know what I mean, but I know I believe it.”
― Jane Urquhart, The Stone Carvers