Silvia Dibi > Silvia's Quotes

“What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“And the rest is rust and stardust.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I could have looked at him forever.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away.”
― Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“Think before you speak. Read before you think.”
― Fran Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader

“A book is not supposed to be a mirror. It's supposed to be a door.”
― Fran Lebowitz

“The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one’s soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive – you are leaking.”
― Fran Lebowitz, The Fran Lebowitz Reader

“The mightiest kings have had their minions; Great Alexander loved Hephaestion, The conquering Hercules for Hylas wept; And for Patroclus, stern Achilles drooped. And not kings only, but the wisest men: The Roman Tully loved Octavius, Grave Socrates, wild Alcibiades.”
― Christopher Marlowe, Edward II

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.

I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“You think that you are an iconoclast, but you’re not. You just move, or replace what you cannot have. If you fail at something, you retreat into something else. Nothing changes you.... I left you because I knew I could never change you. You would stand in the room so still sometimes, as if the greatest betrayal of yourself would be to reveal one more inch of your character.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”
― James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

“For those who feel homesick for a place they’ve never been to. Those who seek even if they do not know what (or where) it is that they are seeking. Those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“It is easier to be in love in a room with closed doors. To have the whole world in one room. One person. The universe condensed and intensified and burning, bright and alive and electric.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“It doesn't look like anything special, like it contains an entire world, though the same could be said of any book.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“Occasionally, Fate pulls itself together again and Time is always waiting.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“Spiritual but not religious,” Zachary clarifies. He doesn’t say what he is thinking, which is that his church is held-breath story listening and late-night-concert ear-ringing rapture and perfect-boss fight-button pressing. That his religion is buried in the silence of freshly fallen snow, in a carefully crafted cocktail, in between the pages of a book somewhere after the beginning but before the ending.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“I accepted because mysterious ladies offering bourbon under the stars is very much my aesthetic.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“There are so many pieces to a person. So many small stories and so few opportunities to read them. 'I would like to look at you' seems like such an awkward request.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“It is a sanctuary for storytellers and storykeepers and storylovers. They eat and sleep and dream surrounded by chronicles and histories and myths.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“One of the reasons why we crave love, and seek it so desperately, is that love is the only cure for loneliness, and shame, and sorrow. But some feelings sink so deep into the heart that only loneliness can help you find them again. Some truths about yourself are so painful that only shame can help you live with them. And some things are just so sad that only your soul can do the crying for you.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“There are concepts that cannot be imagined but can be named. Having received a name, they change, flow into a different entity, and cease to correspond to the name, and then they can be given another, different name, and this process—the spellbinding process of creation—is infinite: this is the word that names it, and this is the word that signifies. A concept as an organism, and text as the universe.”
― Marina Dyachenko, Vita Nostra

“You think the dead we loved ever truly leave us? You think that we don't recall them more clearly in times of great trouble?”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Avant de livrer bataille, on ne dissèque pas son âme, on rassemble tout son courage, on fixe l'adversaire avec obstination. Le vainqueur est l'homme d'une seule idée. Le vainqueur est l'homme qui se détermine.”
― Lucien Rebatet, Les Deux Étendards