S. > S.'s Quotes

“I am alone and the road is very dark. I stumble on, I know not how nor care, for the way seems leading nowhere, and there is no light to guide. But at last the morning comes, and I find that I have grown into myself.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

“What would you do if you were me? Tell me. Please tell me!
But you're far from this. Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it's here. It's now. I have to go through with this, considering the cost at every turn. Nothing will be the same.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Let my country die for me.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“If that made him heavy company sometimes, so be it. Who decreed that life was to be one long rowdy masquerade (punctuated with those little pets of melancholy indulged by a crowd who made a religion of their feelings)?”
― Howard Jacobson, Shylock Is My Name

“If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have waken'd death!”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“Pessimism is too easy, even delicious, the badge and plume of intellectuals everywhere. It absolves the thinking classes of solutions. We excite ourselves with dark thoughts in plays, poems, novels, movies.”
― Ian McEwan, Nutshell

“Have you ever noticed that idiots have a lot of friends? It's just an observation.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“I don't know why it should be, I am sure; but the sight of another man asleep in bed when I am up, maddens me.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, "Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing. ”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Leave me, before I get over the wall & slay you.”
― Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see.
See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“We all create stories to protect ourselves.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Words without experience are meaningless.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Is it love, or is it convenience?... She explained that connivence, habit, comfort, obligation- these are all things that wear the same clothing as love sometimes.”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“A woman doesn't always have a choice, not in a meaningful way. Sometimes there is a debt that must be paid, a comfort that she is obliged to provide, a safe passage that must be secured. Everyone of us has lain down for a reason that was not love.”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“Is motherhood really optional when you’re a perfectly normal woman married to a perfectly normal man?”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“Go to where you are kindest”
― Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

“And now, dear reader, the story is over. It is time for you to cross the bridge once more and return to the world you came from. This river, which is and is not the Thames, must continue flowing without you. You have haunted here long enough, and besides, you surely have rivers of your own to attend to?”
― Diane Setterfield, Once Upon a River

“As is well-known, when the moon hours lengthen, human beings come adrift from the regularity of their mechanical clocks. They nod at noon, dream in waking hours, open their eyes wide to the pitch-black night. It is a time of magic. And as the borders between night and day stretch to their thinnest, so too do the borders between worlds. Dreams and stories merge with lived experience, the dead and the living brush against each other in their comings and goings, and the past and the present touch and overlap. Unexpected things can happen.”
― Diane Setterfield, Once Upon a River

“Along the borders of this world lie others. There are places you can cross. This is one such place.”
― Diane Setterfield, Once Upon a River

“Bad fates do not always follow those who deserve them.”
― Leigh Bardugo, The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic

“You know how the stories go. Interesting things only happen to pretty girls; you will be home by sunset.”
― Leigh Bardugo, The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic

“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them
pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies