Kerry Olivetti > Kerry's Quotes

“Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“The truest tales require time and familiarity to become what they are.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I could be blindfolded and dropped into the deepest ocean and I would know where to find you. I could be buried a hundred miles underground and I would know where you are.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.”
― Charles Portis, True Grit

“A person's shadow stood for his legacy, his impact on the world. Some people cast hardly any shadow at all. Some cast long, deep shadows that endured for centuries.”
― Rick Riordan, The Serpent's Shadow

“The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“There are always those who take it upon themselves to defend God, as if Ultimate Reality, as if the sustaining frame of existence, were something weak and helpless. These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy begging for a few paise, walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, "Business as usual." But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.

These people fail to realize that it is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside. They should direct their anger at themselves. For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart. Meanwhile, the lot of widows and homeless children is very hard, and it is to their defense, not God's, that the self-righteous should rush.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“I've learned that the more people embrace their disadvantages, the less disadvantaged they become!”
― Chris Colfer, The Wishing Spell

“I guess the most amazing thing about crying though is that when you're in it, you think it'll go on forever but it never really lasts half what you think. Not in terms of real time. In terms of real emotions, it's worse than you think, but not by the clock.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“Hoping for something is not the same as expecting it.”
― Anne Rice, The Wolf Gift

“Pestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attai its highest mainfestation only in conjunction with all kinds of art.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“And just as the conclusions of the astronomers would have been vain and uncertain if not founded on observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a single meridian and a single horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and uncertain if not founded on that conception of right, which has been and will be always alike for all men, which has been revealed to me as a Christian, and which can always be trusted in my soul. The question of other religions and their relations to Divinity I have no right to decide, and no possiblity of deciding.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“He who never makes a mistake, never makes anything.”
― Joseph Delaney, Revenge of the Witch

“Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech.”
― Thomas Hardy

“It has been sometimes argued that there is no truer criterion of the vitality of any given art-period than the power of the master-spirits of that time in grotesque; and certainly in the instance of Gothic art there is no disputing the proposition.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle

“How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and evenly coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate!”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rappaccini's Daughter

“I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I don't miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled.”
― Neil Gaiman

“The cleanest souls are the easiest to soil.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair

“People shout when they don't have the vocabulary to whisper.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”
― Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

“What use is logic, when it takes you so far in the wrong direction?”
― Helene Wecker, The Golem and the Jinni

“All books are judged by their covers until they are read.”
― Maryrose Wood, The Mysterious Howling

“For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Nobody's too old for stories--not even God himself.”
― Jonathan Auxier, The Night Gardener

“Stories come in all different kinds." Hester scooted closer, clearly enjoying the subject at hand. "There's tales, which are light and fluffy. Good for a smile on a sad day. Then you got yarns, which are showy-yarns reveal more about the teller than the story. After that there's myths, which are stories made up by whole groups of people. And last of all, there's legends." She raised a mysterious eyebrow. "Legends are different from the rest on account no one knows where they start. Folks don't tell legends; they repeat them. Over and over again through history.”
― Jonathan Auxier, The Night Gardener