Syed > Syed's Quotes

“Sometimes you are aware when your great moments are happening, and sometimes they rise from the past. Perhaps it's the same with people.”
― James Salter, Burning the Days: Recollection

“If your writing doesn't keep you up at night, it won't keep anyone else up either”
― James M. Cain

“Be you writer or reader, it is very pleasant to run away in a book.”
― Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain

“Mine is not an obedient writing. I think that literature as any art has to be irreverent.”
― Reinaldo Arenas

“To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession.”
― Robert Graves

“The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.”
― Andre Maurois

“I love the way that each book—any book—is its own journey. You open it, and off you go….”
― Sharon Creech

“No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake....”
― Alexander Trocchi

“I don’t like you, Park. Sometimes I think I live for you”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“He made her feel like more than the sum of her parts.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“I just want to break that song into pieces and love them all to death.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“I don't like you, Park," she said, sounding for a second like she actually meant it. "I..." - her voice nearly disappeared - "think I live for you."
He closed his eyes and pressed his head back into his pillow.
"I don't think I even breathe when we're not together," she whispered. "Which means, when I see you on Monday morning, it's been like sixty hours since I've taken a breath. That's probably why I'm so crabby, and why I snap at you. All I do when we're apart is think about you, and all I do when we're together is panic. Because every second feels so important. And because I'm so out of control, I can't help myself. I'm not even mine anymore, I'm yours, and what if you decide that you don't want me? How could you want me like I want you?"
He was quiet. He wanted everything she'd just said to be the last thing he heard. He wanted to fall asleep with 'I want you' in his ears.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Bono met his wife in high school," Park says.
"So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be," she says, "we’re sixteen."
"What about Romeo and Juliet?"
"Shallow, confused," then dead.
"I love you, Park says.
"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.
"I’m not kidding," he says.
"You should be.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People

“Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.”
― Maxim Gorky, The Lower Depths and Other Plays

“I have loved you every moment of every day, and I will love you until I cease to be. Bird, man, or king, I love you, and I will always love you.”
― Amy Harmon, The Bird and the Sword

“Swallow Daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them 'til they've time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power, curse not, cure not, 'til the hour. You won't speak and you won't tell, you won't call on heav'n or hell. You will learn and you will thrive. Silence, daughter. Stay alive.”
― Amy Harmon, The Bird and the Sword

“I think I will keep you,”
― Amy Harmon, The Bird and the Sword

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“It was not laziness if he was a rich man. Only the poor were lazy. Just as only the poor were ignorant. A rich man who didn’t know anything was spoiled or independent.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Why does it take a life ending to learn how to cherish each day? Why must we wait until we run out of time to start to accomplish all that we dreamed, when once we had all the time in the world? Why don’t we look at the person we love the most like it’s the last time we will ever see them? Because if we did, life would be so vibrant. Life would be so truly and completely lived.”
― Tillie Cole, A Thousand Boy Kisses

“We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice-cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog’s yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum’s scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartner feels at his mother’s retreat. That only we love the only-we. That only we need the only-we. Solipsism binds us together, J.D. knows. That we feel lonely in a crowd; stop not to dwell on what’s brought the crowd into being. That we are, always, faces in a crowd.”
― David Foster Wallace, Girl with Curious Hair

“I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts.”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“Hollowness: that I understand. I'm starting to believe that there isn't anything you can do to fix it. That's what I've taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mold yourself through the gaps”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis.

(This is a reference to an E.E. Cummings poem within the author's work)”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“Anything that annoys you is for teaching you patience.
Anyone who abandons you is for
teaching you how to stand up
on your own two feet.
Anything that angers you is for teaching you forgiveness and compassion.
Anything that has power over you is for teaching you how to take your power back.
Anything you hate is for
teaching you unconditional love.
Anything you fear is for
teaching you courage to
overcome your fear.
Anything you can’t control is for teaching you how to let go and trust the Universe”
― Jackson Kiddard

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars