Chris > Chris's Quotes

“Little Tamar, forget the long ago. We are here and we are now, and that is all. We are making a new start.”
― Doris Lessing, The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog

“Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect.”
― Margaret Mitchell

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“When the Whispering Mountain shall scream aloud
And the castle of Malyn ride on a cloud,
Then Malyn's lord shall have and hold
The lost that is found, the harp of gold.
Then Fig-hat Ben shall wear a shroud,
Then shall the despoiler, that was so proud,
Plunge headlong down from Devil's Leap;
Then shall the Children from darkness creep,
And the men of the glen avoid disaster,
And the Harp of Teirtu find her master.”
― Joan Aiken, The Whispering Mountain

“She thought about Penny’s stories. There was one about a man who had three wishes and married a swan. If I had three wishes, I know what I’d wish for, thought Is. I’d wish for those two boys to be found, and for us all to be back on Blackheath Edge. She thought about Penny teaching her to read. “What’s the point of reading?” Is had grumbled at first. “You can allus tell me stories, that’s better than reading.” “I’ll not always be here,” Penny had said shortly. “Besides, once you can read, you can learn somebody else. Folk should teach each other what they know.” “Why?” “If you don’t learn anything, you don’t grow. And someone’s gotta learn you.”

Well, thought Is, if I get outta here, I’ll be able to learn some other person the best way to get free from a rolled-up rug.”
― Joan Aiken, Is Underground

“Book lovers will understand me,
and they will know too that part of the pleasure
of a library lies in its very existence.”
― Jan Morris

“Discretion,” said Fen with great complacency, “is my middle name.”
“I dare say. But very few people use their middle names.”
― Edmund Crispin, Beware of the Trains

“None but the most blindly credulous will imaging the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits.”
― Edmund Crispin

“Settle for what you can get, but first ask for the World.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

“Facts are such horrid things!”
― Jane Austen, Lady Susan

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
― Frank Zappa

“A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”
― Alice Munro, Selected Stories

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”
― Philip Reeve, Mortal Engines

“These are the Things that Make a Man

Iron enough to make a nail,
Lime enough to paint a wall,
Water enough to drown a dog,
Sulphur enough to stop the fleas,
Potash enough to wash a shirt,
Gold enough to buy a bean,
Silver enough to coat a pin,
Lead enough to ballast a bird,
Phosphor enough to light the town,
Poison enough to kill a cow,

Strength enough to build a home,
Time enough to hold a child,
Love enough to break a heart.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“To see a candle’s light, one must take it into a dark place.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

“He stared at me as if I’d told him I could hear fishes singing.”
― Katherine Addison, The Witness for the Dead

“A lie that can no longer be challenged becomes insane.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

“Because stories are important.
People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.
Stories exist independently of their players. If you know that, the knowledge is power.
Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling...stories, twisting and blowing through the darkness.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“An ominous hush lies over the busiest, most bustling part of town. No hoofbeats, no rattling of cart wheels or rumble of automobiles, no roar of motorcycles or ringing of bicycle bells. No rasp of sawing from the carpenters’ workshops, or clanging from the forges, or slamming of warehouse doors. No gossiping voices of washerwomen on their way to the hot springs, no shouts of dockworkers unloading the ships, or cries of newspaper hawkers on the main street. No smell of fresh bread from the bakeries, or waft of roasting meat from the restaurants.”
― Sjón, Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was

“A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.”
― Lisa Kleypas, A Wallflower Christmas

“Human beings -- human children especially -- seldom deny themselves the pleasure of exercising a power which they are conscious of possessing, even though that power consist only in a capacity to make others wretched”
― Charlotte Brontë, The Professor

“People who love each other fight. The opposite of love isn’t anger. It’s indifference. When people stop fighting, that’s when you should be worried.”
― Steven Rowley, The Guncle