Istaara > Istaara's Quotes

“To Beatrice-
My love flew like a butterfly
Until death swooped down like a bat
As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said:
'That's the end of that”
― Lemony Snicket, The Miserable Mill

“Because fear kills everything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkspell

“If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkheart

“In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them.
Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness.
Her raven boys.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“While I'm gone," Gansey said, pausing, "dream me the world. Something new for every night.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“If you never saw the stars, candles were enough.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Want and need were words that got eaten smaller and smaller: Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless-steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue's hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes.

What do you want, Adam?

To feel awake when my eyes are open.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“So what you're saying is you can't explain it."
"I did explain it."
"No, you used nouns and verbs together in a pleasing but illogical format.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Sometimes Ronan thought Adam was so used to the right way being painful that he doubted any path that didn’t come with agony.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“What do you want, Adam?
To feel awake when my eyes are open.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“He danced on the knife’s edge between awareness and sleep. When he dreamt like this, he was a king. The world was his to bend. His to burn.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Ronan's second secret was Adam Parrish.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Tears don't become us."
"What becomes us?"
"Action.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“I feel as if I'm always on the verge of waking up.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“To know nothing about yourself is to live. To know yourself badly is to think.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“To have opinions is to sell out to youself. To have no opinions is to exist. To have every opinion is to be a poet.”
― Fernando Pessoa, Libro del desasosiego

“I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing: it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face--there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.

Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“If you don't believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying "Country Roads," try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to "West Virginia, mountain mama," you're going to be singing along, and by the time he's done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who's been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.”
― Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown