Carmen

“Conversation lets you be an artist every time you open your mouth--or shut it. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, "The most important art is to omit"; the key to being a master conversationalist is to listen at least as much as you talk. Just as the other arts include pauses in a dramatic play, white margins around printed text, and space between a singer's phrases, conversation is about silences as well as about words.”
― Margaret Shepherd, The Art of Civilized Conversation: A Guide to Expressing Yourself With Style and Grace

“There are too many books I haven’t read, too many places I haven’t seen, too many memories I haven’t kept long enough.”
― Irwin Shaw

“You cannot embark on life, that one-off coach ride, once again when it is over,
but if you have a book in your hand, no matter how complex or difficult, when you have finished it, you can, if you wish, go back to the beginning, read it again, and thus understand that which is difficult and, with it, understand life as well.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The White Castle

“The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin