Olivia Gobble > Olivia's Quotes

“It didn’t matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle.”
― Lewis Carroll , Alice in Wonderland

“What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“I talk to you as I talk to my own soul," he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple. "And Sassenach," he whispered, "Your face is my heart.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“Birth, death, and frailty in between. Rise and fall- this was the doctor's business, and it was literature's too.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still.”
― C.S. Lewis

“you can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Why, to think of it, we’re in the same tale still! It’s going on. Don’t the great tales never end?’ ‘No, they never end as tales,’ said Frodo. ‘But the people in them come, and go when their part’s ended.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“If there's an image of the apocalypse, I thought, it might be a man in a business suit building a fire in the courtyard of an abandoned high rise.”
― Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

“Finally he spoke the three simple words that no amount of bad art or bad faith can every quite cheapen. She repeated them, with exactly the same slight emphasis on the second word, as though she were the one to say them first. He had no religious belief, but it was impossible not to think of an invisible presence or witness in the room, and that these words spoken aloud were like signatures on an unseen contract.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“You can’t just decide to be happy.”

“No, you can’t. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want?”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“The strongest people I know make the decision every day to wake up and place their two feet on the ground even though they know the monsters beneath their bed will grab at their ankles. The strongest people I know are not strong by definition, at all.”
― Alicia Cook, Stuff I've Been Feeling Lately

“Underneath my outside face
There's a face that none can see.
A little less smiley,
A little less sure,
But a whole lot more like me.”
― Shel Silverstein, Every Thing on It

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“If there was any magic in this world that was not magic, it was wine.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the world, slide it aside for a little bit, and let her please, please just be somewhere and somebody else”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“No story lives unless someone wants to listen. The stories we love best do live in us forever. So whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.”
― J.K. Rowling

“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
― Audre Lorde

“If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“Revolution is not a one time event.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“I don't know how to phrase this exactly but what the fuck?”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“Truth is a substance soluble in lichen vodka.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“Fine. Better than most. But sadly for you there are many heads like it. One hundred. One thousand maybe.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“I wasn't aware that words could hold so much. I didn't know a sentence could be so full.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing