Laura > Laura's Quotes

“Are you quite certain you don't want to come up to my flat for tea and toast and scandal?”
― Y.S. Lee, Rivals in the City

“Mr. Ching claims the superiority of Chinese hand-and-foot fighting, and promises ocular proof of such.”
― Y.S. Lee, Rivals in the City

“Stop shining your lantern in my face."
"It's such a lovely face.”
― Y.S. Lee, The Traitor in the Tunnel

“Read as widely and as deeply as you can. You have to be a reader before you can be a writer.”
― Y.S. Lee

“Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, had a lamp shade on her head. Again.”
― Y.S. Lee, The Traitor in the Tunnel

“It's terrifying to be on the verge of finally getting what you want.”
― Y.S. Lee, A Spy in the House

“Only the greedy and stupid attempt the White Pass. They try by the hundreds each week.”
― Y.S. Lee, A Tyranny of Petticoats

“Have you really seen God?" he said, placing his hand on the young man's shoulder and fixing him with his protuberant eyes.
Believing that the sound he could hear of a thousand voices singing was no longer the wind, Averill said, "I am seeing him now.”
― Frederick Buechner, The Storm

“She read it over one last time, not really satisfied, but it was the truth. Even if it still had some scratch-outs.”
― Sharon M. Draper, Stella by Starlight

“I mean, d'you know what eternity is? There's this big mountain, see, a mile high, at the end of the universe, and once every thousand years there's this little bird-"
-"What little bird?" said Aziraphale suspiciously.
-"This little bird I'm talking about. And every thousand years-"
-"The same bird every thousand years?"
-Crowley hesitated. "Yeah," he said.
-"Bloody ancient bird, then."
-"Okay. And every thousand years this bird flies-"
-"-limps-"
-"-flies all the way to this mountain and sharpens its beak-"
-"Hold on. You can't do that. Between here and the end of the universe there's loads of-" The angel waved a hand expansively, if a little unsteadily. "Loads of buggerall, dear boy."
-"But it gets there anyway," Crowley persevered.
-"How?"
-"It doesn't matter!"
-"It could use a space ship," said the angel.
Crowley subsided a bit. "Yeah," he said. "If you like. Anyway, this bird-"
-"Only it is the end of the universe we're talking about," said Aziraphale. "So it'd have to be one of those space ships where your descendants are the ones who get out at the other end. You have to tell your descendants, you say, When you get to the Mountain, you've got to-" He hesitated. "What have
they got to do?"
-"Sharpen its beak on the mountain," said Crowley. "And then it flies back-"
-"-in the space ship-"
-"And after a thousand years it goes and does it all again," said Crowley quickly.

There was a moment of drunken silence.

-"Seems a lot of effort just to sharpen a beak," mused Aziraphale.
-"Listen," said Crowley urgently, "the point is that when the bird has worn the mountain down to nothing, right, then-"

Aziraphale opened his mouth. Crowley just knew he was going to make some point about the relative hardness of birds' beaks and granite mountains, and plunged on quickly.

-"-then you still won't have finished watching The Sound of Music."

Aziraphale froze.

-"And you'll enjoy it," Crowley said relentlessly. "You really will."
-"My dear boy-"
-"You won't have a choice."
-"Listen-"
-"Heaven has no taste."
-"Now-"
-"And not one single sushi restaurant."

A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Words fall out of the sky like leaves, girl. Grab a couple and write ’em down.”
― Sharon M. Draper, Stella by Starlight

“There is an unseen river of communication that forever flows -- dark and powerful.”
― Sharon M. Draper, Stella by Starlight

“Dinner was fried chicken, collard greens, and silence.”
― Saundra Mitchell, A Tyranny of Petticoats

“One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago
I met a little girl with a book under her arm.
I asked her why she was out so early and
she answered that there were too many books and
far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.”
― Tove Jansson

“You can't ever be really free if you admire somebody too much.”
― Tove Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley

“When I was invited to write a story for A Tyranny of Petticoats, I had two ideas. One was a murder mystery -- I've written that kind of thing before. The other was a cross-dressing, bank-robbing teen bandit on the run. I've never written that kind of thing before. How to choose? How to choose? As Mae West once said, I went with the evil I'd never tried before.”
― Saundra Mitchell

“I have never heard anyone speculate on the origins and function of irony, but I can say with confidence that it is only a little less pervasive in our universe than carbon.”
― Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays

“Yet even in the loneliness of the canyon I knew there were others like me who had brothers they did not understand but wanted to help. We are probably those referred to as "our brother's keepers," possessed of one of the oldest and possible one of the most futile and certainly one of the most haunting instincts. It will not let us go.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“If you push me far enough, all I really know is that he was a fine fisherman."
"You know more than that," my father said. "He was beautiful.”
― Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

“... you can love completely without complete understanding."
"That I have known and preached." my father said.”
― Norman Maclean

“Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle

“Inside the magic globe that Florence Nightingale carries, there are wishes and hopes and love. And all of these things are very tiny and also very bright. And there are thousands of wishes and hopes and love things, and they move around in the magic globe, and that’s what Florence uses to see by. That is how she sees soldiers who have fallen on the battlefield of life.”
― Kate DiCamillo, Raymie Nightingale

“Beware of the brokenhearted,” said the grandmother, “for they will lead you astray.”
― Kate DiCamillo, Raymie Nightingale

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”
― Lemony Snicket

“[...]perhaps the secret of leading a life in which you would not always be worrying about things, or complaining about them, was to accept that there were people who just saw things differently from you and always would. Once you understood that, then you could accept the people themselves as they were and not try to change them. What was even more important, perhaps, was that you could love those people who looked at things so differently, because you realised that they were not trying to make life hard for you by being what they were, but were simply doing their best. Then, when you started to love them, love would do the work that it always did and it would begin to transform them and then they would end up seeing things in the same way that you did.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Precious and Grace

“Mr. J.L.B Matekoni," she asked, "do you think that our souls grow as we get older?"
He did not answer immediately, but when he did, she thought his answer quite perfect. "Yes," he said. "Our souls get wider. They grow like the branches of a tree--growing outwards. And more birds come and make their homes in these branches. And sing a bit more." He stopped and looked a little awkward. "I'm talking nonsense, Mma."
"You're not," she said.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Precious and Grace

“And is it so hard to believe that souls might also travel those paths? That her father and Etienne and Madame Manec and the German boy named Werner Pfennig might harry the sky in flocks, like egrets, like terns, like starlings? That great shuttles of souls might fly about, faded but audible if you listen closely enough? They flow above the chimneys, ride the sidewalks, slip through your jacket and shirt and breastbone and lungs, and pass out through the other side, the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

“Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce