Kristina > Kristina's Quotes

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, 'Do trousers matter?'"
"The mood will pass, sir.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

“As John Ashbery once said, “Being a famous poet is the not the same thing as being famous.”
― Siri Hustvedt, The Summer Without Men

“The dead are celebrated. The dead are loved. They give something to the living. Once you put something into the ground, Doctor, you always know where to find it.”
― Téa Obreht, The Tiger's Wife

“I've never had sex," repeated Artemis. "Never wanted to." It was her turn not to look at him as she spoke. "Not with a man or with a woman, or with an animal, though my family joke about it. And I never will. The thought of it disgusts me. But the others - my family - they think that means I haven't got any feelings. That I could never care about anyone, that I don't know what love is, just because I don't-" she shuddered. "But you know what?" she said, turning to him now. "I really loved my dogs. Everyone laughs at me for it, but it's true. The time I spent with them, running, hunting, those were the happiest times of my life. They understood me. They were animals but they understood me far better than anyone in my family ever will. We shared something, we were the same. And they made me kill them.”
― Marie Phillips, Gods Behaving Badly

“This one isn’t just any old horse. There’s a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be? I tell you, my friend, there’s divinity in a horse, and specially in a horse like this. God got it right the day he created them. And to find a horse like this in the middle of this filthy abomination of a war, is for me like finding a butterfly on a dung heap. We don’t belong in the same universe as a creature like this.”
― Michael Morpurgo, War Horse

“We thought a little longer, and in the end we simply called her Joy.”
― David Almond, Skellig

“Our heroes do not usually, after a certain age, teach or guide us anymore. They choose instead to protect the last territory where they find themselves. Adventurous thought is replaced with almost invisible needs. Those who once mocked the traditions they fought against with laughter now provide only the laughter, not the mockery.”
― Michael Ondaatje, Warlight

“Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“We all have our little sorrows, ducky, you’re not the only one. The littler you are, the larger the sorrow. You think you loved him? What about me?”
― Ronald Harwood, The Dresser

“The Sierra is no better than Bloomsbury when once the novelty has worn off. Besides, these mountains make you dream of women—of women with magnificent hair.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“Well, I suppose one ought not to employ a magician and then complain that he does not behave like other people.”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“The artist says to the cosmos: All I ask is infinite love-is that so very wrong? And the cosmos doesn't even bother to respond.”
― John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure

“I have found … that the people who consider too close an affection between men and animals to be ‘unnatural’ are basing their prejudice on something real. It is the incompatibility of ages. It is in Lucretius. He says that centaurs cannot exist because the horse part would die before the man part. All I can do now is to remember her dead as I buried her, the cold grey jowl in the basket, and not as my heart’s blood, which she was for the last eight years of our twelve. I shall never be more than half a centaur now.”
― T.H. White

“Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who founded the Cynical school, lived in a barrel. When Alexander the Great once visited Diogenes as he was relaxing in the sun, and asked if there were anything he might do for him, the Cynic answered the all-powerful conqueror, ‘Yes, there is something you can do for me. Please move a little to the side. You are blocking the sunlight.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Alison's mummy and I took one look at each other, and from then on the age of chivalry was dead.”
― John Osborne, Look Back in Anger

“A woman at one of mother's parties once said to me, "Do you like reading?" which smote us all to silence, for how could one tell her that books are like having a bath or sleeping, or eating bread - absolute necessities which one never thinks of in terms of appreciation. And we all sat waiting for her to say that she had so little time for reading, before ruling her right out for ever and ever.”
― Rachel Ferguson, The Brontës Went to Woolworths

“You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“How long your hair has grown. You could strangle a man in it.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“When I was born, the word for what I was did not exist.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’
Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Anything is forgiven those who sin elegantly; while gaucheness sours even the noblest deed.”
― Jonathan Grimwood, The Last Banquet

“She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.”
― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

“She is a famous artists' model who claims to have been christened Topaz - even if this is true there is no law to make a woman stick to a name like that.”
― Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“You're better than this. Be with me. Be my wife, my love, my life. Share my wealth. Own my heart. Be my countess. You are tender, utterly sensuous, and in your own naughty way you are pure.”
― Patrick Marber, Don Juan in Soho: After Molière

“She was like Marat only with nobody to kill her.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Our house is so difficult to find that people always arrive late, which means that by the time we go into dinner, I've had so many dry Martinis I'm practically under the piano, and it no longer seems to matter that I haven't put the potatoes on.”
― Jilly Cooper, Jolly Super

“Some cities bustle, some meander, I have read; London blazes and it incinerates. London is the wolf's maw. From the instant I arrived there, I loved every smoldering inch of it”
― Lyndsay Faye, Jane Steele

“Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“Watch out for that pedestrian!"

"It's on the street, it knows the risks it's taking!”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch