Karen > Karen's Quotes

“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”
― Ann Patchett, State of Wonder

“The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone.”
― Donna Tartt

“I am now at a time of life when I can look back on the past, for my soul has been refined in the crucible of interior and exterior trials. Now, like a flower after the storm, I can raise my head and see that the words of the Psalm are realised in me: "The Lord is my Shepherd and I shall want nothing. He hath set me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up on the water of refreshment. He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice for His own Name's sake. For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils for Thou are with me."[6]”
― Thérèse, Saint de Lisieux, The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Âme): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux

“You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.”
― Emma Donoghue, Room

“Sections in the bookstore

- Books You Haven't Read
- Books You Needn't Read
- Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading
- Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written
- Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
- Books You Mean to Read But There Are Others You Must Read First
- Books Too Expensive Now and You'll Wait 'Til They're Remaindered
- Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback
- Books You Can Borrow from Somebody
- Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too
- Books You've Been Planning to Read for Ages
- Books You've Been Hunting for Years Without Success
- Books Dealing with Something You're Working on at the Moment
- Books You Want to Own So They'll Be Handy Just in Case
- Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This Summer
- Books You Need to Go with Other Books on Your Shelves
- Books That Fill You with Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified
- Books Read Long Ago Which It's Now Time to Re-read
- Books You've Always Pretended to Have Read and Now It's Time to Sit Down and Really Read Them”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings...if you need little to set the imagination going, I require even less: the promise of reading is enough.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”
― Corrie Ten Boom, Clippings from My Notebook

“Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen.
Keep in the sunlight.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.”
― Hannah Arendt

“Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“Working in the hospital teaches you that there are only two kinds of people in the world: the sick and the not sick. If you are not sick, shut up and help. Twenty-five years later, I still cannot reject this as an inaccurate worldview.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere, and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“Because we all love imperfectly.”
― Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton

“Sometimes I have loved the peacefulness of an ordinary Sunday. It is like standing in a newly planted garden after a warm rain. You can feel the silent and invisible life.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead