“The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.”
― Bring Up the Bodies
― Bring Up the Bodies
“The word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.”
― Bring Up the Bodies
― Bring Up the Bodies
“He once thought it himself, that he might die with grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.”
― Bring Up the Bodies
― Bring Up the Bodies
“I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth. She was only the dead-leaf echo of the nymphet from long ago - but I loved her, this Lolita, pale and polluted and big with another man's child. She could fade and wither - I didn't care. I would still go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of her face.”
― Lolita
― Lolita
“No people whose word for 'yesterday' is the same as their word for 'tomorrow' can be said to have a firm grip on the time.”
― Midnight’s Children
― Midnight’s Children
Shivam’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Shivam’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Shivam
Lists liked by Shivam































