Julia James Burns > Julia James's Quotes

“There are moments in life, so monumental and still, that the memory can never be retrieved without a catch to the throat or an interruption to the beat of the heart. Can never be retrieved without the rumbling disquiet of how close that moment came to not having happened at all.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life

“You were never just you, and you owed it to the people you cared about to remember that. Because the people you loved were part of your identity, too. Perhaps the biggest part.”
― Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake

“Question yourself, yes, but don’t doubt yourself. There’s a difference.”
― Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake

“Einstein said, So far as the theories of mathematics are about reality, they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality.”
― Laura Dave, The Last Thing He Told Me

“That sometimes you find your way to the place that wants you most.”
― Laura Dave, The Last Thing He Told Me

“The could-have been boys still love you.”
― Laura Dave, The Last Thing He Told Me

“love well those who are dying, so that they may die in love.”
― Julia Whelan

“Sadness keeps attempting to tie weights to her wrists and ankles, therefore she has to keep moving, she has to outpace it.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“don’t ever recover from losing someone you love—even the ones you leave behind because you’re better off without them.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“It takes a dozen bees to gather enough nectar to make a teaspoon of honey, each of them alighting on roughly 2,600 flowers and flying 850 miles back and forth. A worker bee weighs little more than a breath—around 100 milligrams—but she can carry half her body weight in nectar.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“some things needed to stay in the past because the past was the only place they made sense.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“Being gay or straight,” says Elizabeth, “is about who you want to go to
bed with. Being trans—or cis—is about who you want to go to bed as.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“Art versus humanity is not the question, Ulysses. One doesn’t exist without the other. Art is the antidote.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life

“Beautiful art opens our eyes to the beauty of the world, Ulysses. It repositions our sight and judgement. Captures forever that which is fleeting.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life

“No single act of generosity remains in isolation. The ripples are many.”
― Sarah Winman, Still Life

“No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one else will.”
― Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women

“The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Sam's doctor said to him, "The good news is that the pain is in your head."
But I am in my head, Sam thought.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures."

"That's an oversimplification of the issue."

"The alternative to appropriation is a world where white European people make art about white European people with only white European references in it. Swap African or Asian or Latin or whatever culture you want for European. A world where everyone is blind and deaf to any culture or experience that is not their own. I hate that world don't you? I'm terrified of that world and I don't want to live in a that world, and as a mixed race person, I literally don't exist in it. My dad, who I barely knew, was Jewish. My mom was an American-born Korean. I was raised by Korean immigrant grandparents in Korea Town Los Angeles and as any mixed race person will tell you-- to be half of two things is to be whole of nothing.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“That love is all there is; is all we know of love. It is enough; the freight should be proportioned to the groove.” What is the “freight”? he wondered. What is the “groove”?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Our bodies hide so many mysteries and they tell so many stories without a single word”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“It’s no good telling tales without a drink.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“Beauty attracts beauty and begets beauty.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“I like photos better. They capture the thing in the moment.” “But painting is the repeated exposure to a thing. It captures the essence of the object.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic

“He didn't want to see anymore, he just wanted to feel and be felt, texture on texture.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“What is a wedding, Cleo wondered, if not a private dream made public?”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein

“Fun was fine when you were young, but as you got older, it was kindness that counted. Kindness that showed up.”
― Coco Mellors, Cleopatra and Frankenstein