“There’s a Greek legend—no, it’s in something Plato wrote—about how true lovers are really two halves of the same person. It says that people wander around searching for their other half, and when they find him or her, they are finally whole and perfect. The thing that gets me is that the story says that originally all people were really pairs of people, joined back to back, and that some of the pairs were man and man, some woman and woman, and others man and woman. What happened was that all of these double people went to war with the gods, and the gods, to punish them, split them all in two. That’s why some lovers are heterosexual and some are homosexual, female and female, or male and male.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“The thing about mountains is that you have to keep on climbing them, and that it's always hard, but there's a view from top every time when you finally get there.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins?”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“The 1st day, I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching Annie feed the cats, and I knew I wanted to do that forever.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“I went downstairs to Dad’s encyclopedia and looked up HOMOSEXUALITY, but that didn’t tell me much about any of the things I felt. What struck me most, though, was that, in the whole long article, the word “love” wasn’t used even once. That made me mad; it was as if whoever wrote the article didn’t know that gay people actually love each other. The encyclopedia writers ought to talk to me, I thought as I went back to bed; I could tell them something about love.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“Don't let ignorance win. Let love.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“Don't punish yourselves for people's ignorant reactions to what we all are. Don't let ignorance win. Let love.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“It's Annie and me they're all sitting around here like cardboard people judging; It's Annie and me. And what we did that they think is wrong, when you pare it all down, was fall in love.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“But what really is immorality? And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“And Annie showed me how ailanthus trees grow under subway and sewer gratings, stretching toward the sun, making shelter in the summer, she said, laughing, for the small dragons that live under the streets.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“The first day, I stood in the kitchen leaning against the counter watching Annie feed the cats, and I knew I wanted to be able to do that forever: stand in kitchens watching Annie feed cats. Our kitchens. Our cats.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“Liza-don't let it make any difference. It won't, will it? With us, I mean."
"Of course it won't," I told her.
But I was wrong. Six months of not writing-that's a difference.
And so I lied to Annie. On top of everything else, I lied to Annie, too.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“Ugh! Young girls, they should laugh. Life's bad enough when you're grown, you might as well laugh when you're young.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“I am happy, I tried to tell him with my eyes. I'm happy with Annie; she and my work are all I'll ever need; she's happy, too-we both were till this happened...”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“It was like a war inside me; I couldn’t even recognize all the sides. There was one that said, ‘No, this is wrong; you know it’s wrong and bad and sinful,’ and there was another that said, ‘Nothing has ever felt so right and natural and true and good,’ and another that said it was happening too fast, and another that just wanted to stop thinking altogether and fling my arms around Annie and hold her forever. There were other sides, too, but I couldn’t sort them out.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“And that's like my world." Annie pointed up to the stars again."Inaccecible.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“And that's like my world." Annie pointed up to the stars again. "Inaccessible."
"Not," I said to her softly, "to unicorns. Nothing's inaccessible to unicorns. Not even--not even white birds.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“Don't let ignorance win', said Ms. Stevenson. 'Let love.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“Have you ever felt really close to someone? So close that you can't understand why you and the other person have two separate bodies, two separate skins? I think it was Sunday when that feeling began.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“It felt a little as if we'd found a script that had been written just for us, and we were reading through the beginning quickly [...] hurrying so we could get to the part that mattered, whatever that was to be.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
“Chad kept kidding me that I was in love, and asking with whom, and then Sally and Walt did, too, and after a while I didn’t even mind, because even if they had the wrong idea about it, they were right. Soon it wasn’t hard any more to say it—to myself, I mean, as well as over and over again to Annie—and to accept her saying it to me.”
― Nancy Garden, quote from Annie on My Mind
Nancy Garden
Born place: in Boston, The United States
Born date May 15, 1938
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“Forgiveness is not a feeling; it is a commitment.”
― Gary Chapman, quote from The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
“They might all be drinking laced Kool-Aid in there, but she had a good head on her shoulders. Things like vampires and past lives and immortality just didn’t exist in the real world. And Schuyler was a card-carrying member of the real world. She didn’t want to check into CrazyTown any time soon.”
― Melissa de la Cruz, quote from Blue Bloods
“Bartimaeus: "A small piece of advice," I said "it isn't wise to be rude to someone bigger than you, especially when they've just trapped you under a boulder."
Imp: "You can stick your advice up...."
"This brief pause replaces a short, censored episode, characterized by bad language and some sadly necessary violence. When we pick up the story again, everything is as before, except that I am perspiring slightly and the contrite imp is the model of cooperation."
Bartimaeus: "I'll ask again: who is Rupert Deveraeux?"
Imp: "He's the British Prime Minister, oh Most Bounteous and Merciful one.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Amulet of Samarkand
“What people forget is a journey to nowhere starts with a single step, too.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Survivor
“I look at the blanked-out faces of the other passengers--hoisting their briefcases, their backpacks, shuffling to disembark--and I think of what Hobie said: beauty alters the grain of reality. And I keep thinking too of the more conventional wisdom: namely, that the pursuit of pure beauty is a trap, a fast track to bitterness and sorrow, that beauty has to be wedded to something more meaningful.
Only what is that thing? Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet--for me, anyway--all that's worth living for lies in that charm?
A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.
Because--isn't it drilled into us constantly, from childhood on, an unquestioned platitude in the culture--? From William Blake to Lady Gaga, from Rousseau to Rumi to Tosca to Mister Rogers, it's a curiously uniform message, accepted from high to low: when in doubt, what to do? How do we know what's right for us? Every shrink, every career counselor, every Disney princess knows the answer: "Be yourself." "Follow your heart."
Only here's what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can't be trusted--? What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?...If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or...is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?”
― Donna Tartt, quote from The Goldfinch
The Inside Story
Birds of America
The Time of Our Sing...
The Way We Fall
Forever Mine
Into This River I Dr...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.
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