Robin > Robin's Quotes

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“The library has a robust collection of what I call non-cuddly hate lit. This is one of my favorite things about working here: If you believe censorship is poison, here lies paradise.”
― Josh Hanagarne, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

“I also work here because I love books, because I'm inveterately curious, and because, like most librarians, I'm not well suited to anything else. As a breed, we're the ultimate generalists. I'll never know everything about anything, but I'll know something about almost everything and that's how I like to live.”
― Josh Hanagarne, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

“A library is a miracle. A place where you can learn just about anything, for free. A place where your mind can come alive.”
― Josh Hanagarne, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

“To see the value of a library, ignore the adults. Find an inquisitive child who doesn't have an iPhone yet, take them to the library, and tell them that they can learn anything they want there.”
― Josh Hanagarne, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

“I work [at a library] because I love books, because I'm inveterately curious, and because, like most librarians, I'm not well suited to anything else. As a breed, we're the ultimate generalists. I'll never know everything about anything, but I'll know something about almost everything and that's how I like to live.”
― Josh Hanagarne, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

“I’m rarely at a loss for words outside the library. But within its walls I'm required to form sentences that no logical person should ever have to utter, for instance, "You can't sleep on the floor at the library under your blanket.”
― Josh Hanagarne, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

“I love to tell kids that everything in the library is theirs. "We just keep it here for you." One million items that you can have for free! Collection that represents an answer to just about any question you could ask. A bottomless source of stories and entertainments and scholarly works and works of art.”
― Josh Hanagarne, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

“I love to tell kids that everything in the library is theirs. “We just keep it here for you.” One million items that you can have for free!”
― Josh Hanagarne, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family

“I think there should be a rule that everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their lives.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“Sometimes when you like where you end up, you don’t care how you got there.”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“There are too many loose ends in the world in need of knots.”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“One is the left shoe and the other is the right. They are the same but not interchangeable.”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“It occurs to me that maybe a man can love his son only as much as he loves the mother.”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“Babies bring the love with them when they come.”
― Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“There is a way to be good again...”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“How similar does someone have to be to you before you remember to see them, first, as human?”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“Sometimes, making the world a better place just involves creating space for the people who are already in it.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey