“Someone can break your heart, leave you dead on the lawn, and still you never learn what to say to stop it all over again. ”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“How do you forget something? You just walk away from it, those who are still alive. There are so few clearings in our hearts and minds, so few places where something can't grow on top of whatever happened to us before, and this is love too. ”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“They looked at each other like a pair of parentheses.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“This is love, to sit with someone you've known forever in a place you've been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it's time to go.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“It is not the diamonds or the birds, the people or the potatoes; it is not any of the nouns. The miracle is the adverbs, the way things are done. It is the way love gets done despite every catastrophe.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“So she loved him. She just did immediately and again often and clearly naturally and soundly and obviously and many others.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“I have a dream of what would have happened if what happened instead hadn't.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“I want to love you and take you pretty places. Yes, I have things wrong, but also I can walk through walls if you'll let me show you.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“Love is candy from a stranger, but it's candy you've had before and it probably won't kill you.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“They say love's like a bus, and if you wait long enough another one will come along, but not in this place where the buses are slow and most of the cute ones are gay.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“You meet people who are in pain in life and love and you forgive them for behaving the way they do.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“The window rattles without you, you bastard. The trees are the cause, rattling in the wind, you jerk, the wind scraping those leaves and twigs against my window. They'll keep doing this, you terrible husband, and slowly wear away our entire apartment building. I know all these facts about you and there is no longer any use for them. What will I do with your license plate number, and where you hid the key outside so we'd never get locked out of this shaky building? What good does it do me, your pants size and the blue cheese preference for dressing? Who opens the door in the morning now, and takes the newspaper out of the plastic bag when it rains? I'll never get back all the hours I was nice to your parents. I nudge my cherry tomatoes to the side of the plate, bastard, but no one is waiting there with a fork to eat them. I miss you and I love you, bastard bastard bastard, come and clean the onion skins out of the crisper and trim back the tree so I can sleep at night.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“Love was in the air, so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“After a certain age, you couldn't even say where you were from. You went someplace, and lived there. And then you went someplace else.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“Love can smack you like a seagull, and pour all over your feet like junk mail.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“ But there was more, as there always is when the love goes. She was haunted, naturally. Otherwise what is the point, why leave your rickety house, and why this yo-yo world giving us things and yanking them back?”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“The clock in his car hadn't adjusted to daylight saving time yet and said it was four-fifteen when it was really five-fifteen. Peter probably didn't have time to fiddle with it, or it was tricky, as car clocks are. I didn't mind. You can't mind these things, you just can't, for to dislike what makes a person human is to dislike all humans, or at least other people who can't work clocks. You have to love the whole person, if you are truly in love. If you are going to take a lifelong journey with somebody, you can't mind if the other person believes they are leaving for that journey an hour earlier than you, as long as truly, in the real world, you are both leaving at exactly the same time.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“This is love if it's not with you, a terrible fiery something that makes people look away, and it feels like a punch in the throat.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“Once more, this is love: it rings and you open up unless it looks like an ax murderer.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“We need things, and the opposite of them, and we are so rarely completely comfortable.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“And when love is over when the diner of love seems closed from the outside you want all those hours back along with anything you left at the lover’s house and maybe a couple of things which aren’t technically yours on the grounds that you wasted a portion of your life and those hours have all gone southside.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“They say that when you’re really in love, the world becomes gossamer and gorgeous, but in my experience the world gets grimy, and the love object is in stark relief from the surroundings. This is love, a pretty thing on an ugly street.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“Help me,' Allison says, but she is soft-spoken, and everyone she loves is so far away.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“It’s not the makeup and it’s not the way that you dance and this is like love too where there’s only one dancer who will win your contest that night and they are not particularly the best one”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“I want you to love me in particular.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“You're a ghost! Eddie cried. You're empty and you have nothing inside you.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“You can’t mind these things, you just can’t, for to dislike what makes a person human is to dislike all humans.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
“The movie was kickass, which was appropriate, because tonight it was called Kickass: The Movie.”
― Daniel Handler, quote from Adverbs
Daniel Handler
Born place: in San Francisco, California, The United States
See more on GoodReads
“He wondered if she wondered if he were watching her.”
― Raymond Carver, quote from Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?
“It is related that Sakyamuni [the historical Buddha] once dismissed as of small consequence a feat of levitation on the part of a disciple, and cried out in pity for a yogin by the river who had spent twenty years of his human existence learning to walk on water, when the ferryman might have taken him across for a small coin.”
― Peter Matthiessen, quote from The Snow Leopard
“Knowledge can be like the skin on the surface of the water in a pond, or it can go all the way down to the mud. It can be the tiny tip of the iceberg or the whole hundred percent.”
― Siobhan Dowd, quote from The London Eye Mystery
“It’s no one’s fault really,” he continued. “A big city cannot afford to have its attention distracted from the important job of being a big city by such a tiny, unimportant item as your happiness or mine.”
This came out of him easily, assuredly, and I was suddenly interested. On closer inspection there was something aesthetic and scholarly about him, something faintly professorial. He knew I was with him, listening, and his grey eyes were kind with offered friendliness. He continued:
“Those tall buildings there are more than monuments to the industry, thought and effort which have made this a great city; they also occasionally serve as springboards to eternity for misfits who cannot cope with the city and their own loneliness in it.” He paused and said something about one of the ducks which was quite unintelligible to me.
“A great city is a battlefield,” he continued. “You need to be a fighter to live in it, not exist, mark you, live. Anybody can exist, dragging his soul around behind him like a worn-out coat; but living is different. It can be hard, but it can also be fun; there’s so much going on all the time that’s new and exciting.”
I could not, nor wished to, ignore his pleasant voice, but I was in no mood for his philosophising.
“If you were a negro you’d find that even existing would provide more excitement than you’d care for.”
He looked at me and suddenly laughed; a laugh abandoned and gay, a laugh rich and young and indescribably infectious. I laughed with him, although I failed to see anything funny in my remark.
“I wondered how long it would be before you broke down and talked to me,” he said, when his amusement had quietened down. “Talking helps, you know; if you can talk with someone you’re not lonely any more, don’t you think?”
As simple as that. Soon we were chatting away unreservedly, like old friends, and I had told him everything.
“Teaching,” he said presently. “That’s the thing. Why not get a job as a teacher?”
“That’s rather unlikely,” I replied. “I have had no training as a teacher.”
“Oh, that’s not absolutely necessary. Your degrees would be considered in lieu of training, and I feel sure that with your experience and obvious ability you could do well.”
“Look here, Sir, if these people would not let me near ordinary inanimate equipment about which I understand quite a bit, is it reasonable to expect them to entrust the education of their children to me?”
“Why not? They need teachers desperately.”
“It is said that they also need technicians desperately.”
“Ah, but that’s different. I don’t suppose educational authorities can be bothered about the colour of people’s skins, and I do believe that in that respect the London County Council is rather outstanding. Anyway, there would be no need to mention it; let it wait until they see you at the interview.”
“I’ve tried that method before. It didn’t work.”
“Try it again, you’ve nothing to lose. I know for a fact that there are many vacancies for teachers in the East End of London.”
“Why especially the East End of London?”
“From all accounts it is rather a tough area, and most teachers prefer to seek jobs elsewhere.”
“And you think it would be just right for a negro, I suppose.” The vicious bitterness was creeping back; the suspicion was not so easily forgotten.
“Now, just a moment, young man.” He was wonderfully patient with me, much more so than I deserved. “Don’t ever underrate the people of the East End; from those very slums and alleyways are emerging many of the new breed of professional and scientific men and quite a few of our politicians. Be careful lest you be a worse snob than the rest of us. Was this the kind of spirit in which you sought the other jobs?”
― E.R. Braithwaite, quote from To Sir, With Love
“In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from Annabel Lee
Into the Dreaming
The Romance of Trist...
Exercises in Style
Shine
Peter: The Untold Tr...
Flowers from the Sto...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
