KB > KB's Quotes

“If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window

“I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.”
― Chris Cleave, Incendiary

“The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“The farther you go...the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it's easy to fall off.”
― Anderson Cooper, Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

“I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“Like they were puppets, and the puppeteer had sneezed.”
― Lee Child, Never Go Back

“Reacher said, "So here's the thing Brett. Either you take your hand off my chest, or I'll take it off your wrist.”
― Lee Child, Worth Dying For

“Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat. Susan knew what that last rating meant. Like having a running chainsaw thrown at you”
― Lee Child, 61 Hours

“See, the night doth enfold us! See, all the world lies sleeping!”
― Giacomo Puccini

“Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“I look at the blanked-out faces of the other passengers--hoisting their briefcases, their backpacks, shuffling to disembark--and I think of what Hobie said: beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.

Only what is that thing? Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet--for me, anyway--all that's worth living for lies in that charm?

A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.

Because--isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture--? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart."

Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted--? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?...If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or...is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Can’t good come around sometimes through some strange back doors?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“I often think we should have tattooed on the back of whatever hand we use to shoot or write, 'I might be wrong.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“Now here's a good one:
you're lying on your deathbed.
You have one hour to live.
Who is it, exactly, you have needed
all these years to forgive?”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“Peter swept aside Yogi Tea and Harmony Herbal Blend, though he hesitated a second over the chamomile. .... But no. Violent death demanded Earl Grey.”
― Louise Penny , Still Life

“I went through a period in my life when I had no friends, when the phone never rang, when I thought I would die from loneliness. I know that the real blessing here isn't that I have a book published, but that I have so many people to thank.”
― Louise Penny

“He tried to let her know it would be all right. Eventually. Life wouldn't always be this painful. The world wouldn't always be this brutal. Give it time, little one. Give it another chance. Come back.”
― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace

“Every year the hunters shot cows and horses and family pets and each other. And unbelievably, they sometimes shot themselves, perhaps in a psychotic episode where they mistook themselves for dinner”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Three Pines wasn’t on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“When Olivier had been taken away Gamache had sat back down and stared at the sack. what could be worse than Chaos, Despair, War?

What would even the Mountain flee from? Gamache had given it a lot of thought.

What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And Gamache thought he had the answer.

Regret.

Regret for things said, for things done, and not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.

Finally, when he was alone, the Chief Inspector had opened the sack and looking inside had realize he'd been wrong. The worst thing of all wasn't regret.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“That was the danger. Not that betrayals happened, not that cruel things happened, but that they could outweigh all the good. That we could forget the good and only remember the bad.”
― Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead

“When my death us do part
Then shall forgiven and forgiving meet again,
Or will it be, as always was, too late?”
― Louis Penny

“Her voice was slightly accented but her French was perfect. Someone who'd not just learned the language but loved it. And it showed with every syllable. Gamache knew it was impossible to split language from culture. That without one the other withered. To love the language was to respect the culture.”
― Louise Penny, The Brutal Telling

“Books were everywhere in their large apartment. Histories, biographies, novels, studies on Quebec antiques, poetry. Placed in orderly bookcases. Just about every table had at least one book on it, and oftern several magazines. And the weekend newspapers were scattered on the coffee table in the living room, in front of the fireplace. If a visitor was the observant type, and made it further into the apartment to Gamache's study, he might see the story the books in there told.”
― Louise Penny, A Trick of the Light

“I've been treating you with courtesy and respect because that's the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness with weakness.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“They lead "still" lives, waiting. - Myrna Landers

Waiting for what? - Armand Gamache

Waiting for someone to save them. Expecting someone to save them or at least protect them from the big, bad world. The thing is no one else can save them because the problem is theirs and so is the solution. - Myrna”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle