Quotes from Bel Canto

“It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn't for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“He doesn’t know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later will he know he should have asked for more.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to seem secure, one feels the freedom to complain.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is lost, look at what is gained!”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“Most of the time, we're loved for what we can do rather than for who we are. It's not such a bad thing, being loved for what you can do.'
'But the other is better.'
'Better. I hate to say better, but it is. If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“Maybe there would be a bad outcome for some of the others, but no one was going to shoot a soprano.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“The timing of the electrical failure seemed dramatic and perfectly correct, as if the lights had said, "You have no need for sight. Listen.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“But together they moved through the world quite easily, two small halves of courage making a brave whole.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“Sleep was a country for which he could not obtain a visa.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“The light was cut to lace by the trees that had grown so thick with leaves in the last few months.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“When you think of love you think as an American. You must think like a Russian. It is a more expansive view.'

'Americans havea bad habbit of thinking like Americans,' Roxane said kindly.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“Wearing shoes in the house was barbaric. There was almost as much indignity in wearing shoes in the house as there was in being kidnapped.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“...as if the world had become a giant train station in which everything was delayed until further notice.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

“...it was a miraculous thing to be able to watch the person you love undetected,”
― Ann Patchett, quote from Bel Canto

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Popular quotes

“Mais les signes de ce qui m'attendait réellement, je les ai tous négligés. Je travaille mon diplôme sur le surréalisme à la bibliothèque de Rouen, je sors, je traverse le square Verdrel, il fait doux, les cygnes du bassin ont reparu, et d'un seul coup j'ai conscience que je suis en train de vivre peut-être mes dernières semaines de fille seule, libre d'aller où je veux, de ne pas manger ce midi, de travailler dans ma chambre sans être dérangée. Je vais perdre définitivement la solitude. Peut-on s'isoler facilement dans un petit meublé, à deux. Et il voudra manger ses deux repas par jour. Toutes sortes d'images me traversent. Une vie pas drôle finalement. Mais je refoule, j'ai honte, ce sont des idées de fille unique, égocentrique, soucieuse de sa petite personne, mal élevée au fond. Un jour, il a du travail, il est fatigué, si on mangeait dans la chambre au lieu d'aller au restau. Six heures du soir cours Victor-Hugo, des femmes se précipitent aux Docks, en face du Montaigne, prennent ci et ça sans hésitation, comme si elles avaient dans la tête toute la programmation du repas de ce soir, de demain peut-être, pour quatre personnes ou plus aux goûts différents. Comment font-elles ? [...] Je n'y arriverai jamais. Je n'en veux pas de cette vie rythmée par les achats, la cuisine. Pourquoi n'est-il pas venu avec moi au supermarché. J'ai fini par acheter des quiches lorraines, du fromage, des poires. Il était en train d'écouter de la musique. Il a tout déballé avec un plaisir de gamin. Les poires étaient blettes au coeur, "tu t'es fait entuber". Je le hais. Je ne me marierai pas. Le lendemain, nous sommes retournés au restau universitaire, j'ai oublié. Toutes les craintes, les pressentiments, je les ai étouffés. Sublimés. D'accord, quand on vivra ensemble, je n'aurai plus autant de liberté, de loisirs, il y aura des courses, de la cuisine, du ménage, un peu. Et alors, tu renâcles petit cheval tu n'es pas courageuse, des tas de filles réussissent à tout "concilier", sourire aux lèvres, n'en font pas un drame comme toi. Au contraire, elles existent vraiment. Je me persuade qu'en me mariant je serai libérée de ce moi qui tourne en rond, se pose des questions, un moi inutile. Que j'atteindrai l'équilibre. L'homme, l'épaule solide, anti-métaphysique, dissipateur d'idées tourmentantes, qu'elle se marie donc ça la calmera, tes boutons même disparaîtront, je ris forcément, obscurément j'y crois. Mariage, "accomplissement", je marche. Quelquefois je songe qu'il est égoïste et qu'il ne s'intéresse guère à ce que je fais, moi je lis ses livres de sociologie, jamais il n'ouvre les miens, Breton ou Aragon. Alors la sagesse des femmes vient à mon secours : "Tous les hommes sont égoïstes." Mais aussi les principes moraux : "Accepter l'autre dans son altérité", tous les langages peuvent se rejoindre quand on veut.”
― Annie Ernaux, quote from A Frozen Woman

“No se de que están hechas las almas. pero la mía y la suya son una sola.”
― Anna Todd, quote from After Ever Happy

“Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby, in a singular mild, firm voice, replied, “I would prefer not to.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Bartleby el escribiente

“Writer's Resolution
Enough's Enough! No more shall I
Pursue the Muse and scorch the pie
Or dream of Authoring a book
When I (unhappy soul) must cook;
Or burn the steak while I wool-gather,
And stir my spouse into a lather
Invoking words like "Darn!" and such
And others that are worse (Oh, much!)
Concerning culinary knack
Which I (HE says) completely lack.
I'll keep my mind upon my work;
I'll learn each boresome cooking quirk;
This day shall mark a new leaf's turning...
That smell! Oh Hell! The beans are burning!”
― quote from The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less

“You misinterpret everything, even the silence.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Slottet

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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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