“The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Everyone has two memories. The one you can tell and the one that is stuck to the underside of that, the dark, tarry smear of what happened.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“She believes in will. It is so frail and delicate at night that she can’t even imagine the next morning, but it is so wide and binding by the middle of the next day that she cannot even remember the terrible night. It is as if she gives birth every day.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Surely, somewhere in the back of Bulfinch, in a part Lillian had not gotten to, there is an obscure (abstruse, arcane, shadowy, and even hidden) version of Proserpine in he Underworld in which a tired Jewish Ceres schleps through the outskirts of Tartarus, an ugly village of tired whores who must double as laundresses and barbers, a couple of saloons, a nearly empty five-and-dime, and people too poor to pull up stakes. In this version, Ceres looks all over town for her Proserpine, who crossed the River Cyane in a pretty sailboat with Pluto, having had the good sense to come to an understanding with the king early on. Pluto and Proserpine picnic in a charming park, twinkling lights overhead and handsome wide benches like the ones in Central Park. When Ceres comes, tripping a little on her hem as she walks through the soft grass, muttering and trying to yank Proserpine to her feet so they can start the long trip home to Enna and daylight (which has lost much of its luster, now that Proserpine is queen of all she surveys), the girl does not jump up at the sight of her mother, but takes her time handing out the sandwiches and pours cups of sweetened tea for the three of them. She lays a nicely ironed napkin in her lap and another in the lap of her new husband, the king. Proserpine does not eat the pomegranate seeds by mistake, or in a moment of desperate hunger, or fright, or misunderstanding. She takes the pomegranate slice out of her husband’s dark and glittering hand and pulls the seeds into her open, laughing mouth; she eats only six seeds because her mother knocks it out of her hand before she can swallow the whole sparkling red cluster.
“We have to get home,” Ceres says.
“I am home,” her daughter says.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“But in the morning everything can, and must, be seen. Daylight takes us; it peels us like fruit.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“[...] und sie hört, wie er sich in sein Doppelbett legt, auf seine Seite, da er nicht auf Helens Seite schlafen kann, wo er heimlich drei ihrer bestickten Kissen arrangiert hat und sich zum Schlafen ihnen zuwendet, ein Arm um das mittlere Kissen gelegt, den anderen unter dem Kopf, wobei seine Hand wie zum Schutz auf seiner Stirn ruht.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Eviction," Frieda said. "You can't pay, you can't stay." She said in Yiddish, "Es iz shver tzu makhen a leben." It's hard to make a living.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“...as he cannot sleep on Helen's side, which is where he has secretly arranged three of her embroidered pillows, and sleeps facing them, one arm around the middle pillow, the other curled under his head, his hand resting on his brow as if for protection.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
Amy Bloom
Born place: in The United States
Born date January 1, 1953
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“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”
― Cheryl Strayed, quote from Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
“You don't have to destroy me. Do you? ...”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories
“This isn’t fair,” Klaus said finally, but he said it so quietly that the departing islanders probably did not hear. Only his sisters heard him, and the snake the Baudelaires thought they would never see again, and of course Count Olaf, who was huddled in the large, ornate bird cage like an imprisoned beast, and who was the only person to answer him. “Life isn’t fair,” he said, in his undisguised voice, and for once the Baudelaire orphans agreed with every word the man said.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The End
“Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Arcadia
“اگر مغز ما آن قدر ساده بود که میتوانستیم آن را درک کنیم، آن قدر احمق میبودیم که به هیچ وجه نمیتوانستیم آن را درک کنیم.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny
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The Society of the S...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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