“You said you wanted someone to know you. Maybe I just want to have someone know me too. Without you in this world, the memories of every moment we’ve shared together will be gone. We only exist because others see us. Part of my existence...an important part, only exists because you are here to see it.”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Between the Lives
“My Sabine,
I just left your room. You were so beautiful lying there sound asleep that I couldn’t bear to wake you. But I’m not feeling so great and there are things I promised to tell you that I fear I may not get the chance to.
I know you had once hoped that I would be the one to pass on your letters to Maddie once you were gone. But, as it turns out, I think it is going to be me who ends up leaving the letters behind.
Be mad at me. You should. But after that try to understand that I did what I thought was best. I wanted to tell you. So many times I snuck down to your room planning on telling you everything, but I just couldn’t.
Partly it was for you – yes. You needed time and I didn’t want to influence your choices, even once I realised what was happening between us, even more so then. Falling in love with you only made those choices more complicated and I feared that you might choose to stay for me and then, after I was gone, change your mind. I couldn’t let that happen.
Partly the choice was selfish, and for that I am sorry. For so long now people have been trying to fix me, but where they failed, you succeeded. You’ve given me more life in the last couple of weeks that I’ve had in years. Being with you, loving you, making memories with you, fearing for you, wanting to show you the beauty of life instead of the terror – it was bittersweet, but more importantly Sabine, it was real.
I know this is the part when I beg you to go on, live your life and be happy. But I don’t need to say those things. I know you. Your lives will be extraordinary. You certainly made mine feel that way.
Please find it in your heart to forgive me one day. I wish we had more time, but I want to thank you – for giving me life in my time of death.
My love for you is eternal.
Ethan.”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Between the Lives
“Life’s too short. If Ethan taught me anything, that would be it. I want to get on with living mine.”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Between the Lives
“Some things are so real you can feel them to your core. It doesn't matter where you go, they go with you. Anywhere.”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Between the Lives
“I have two lives and yet I'm a ghost.”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Between the Lives
“And then I swallowed hard, knowing that out of everyone, I was best at lying to myself.”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Between the Lives
“For now, you will be confined to your room until you earn privileges.'
'Privileges?'
He nodded. 'Once we start working together and you show a willingness to cooperate, we can add privileges to your daily program. Outside time, personal items, television, phone--those kinds of things.'
He checked his watch while I stared at him in horror. Privileges? As in out-frickin'-side time? I was in prison!”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Between the Lives
“الصعوبة لاتكمن في معايشة الناس إنما في فهمهم .”
― José Saramago, quote from Blindness
“لا تحيطوا أبدًا بالعدو تمامًا، ودعوا له مخرجًا للهرب، لأنه سيحارب أقوى وهو يائس إذا ما حوصر”
― Alex Haley, quote from Roots: The Saga of an American Family
“Those are brave men... lets go kill them”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from A Clash of Kings
“I REMEMBER the day the Aleut ship came to our island. At first it seemed like a small shell afloat on the sea. Then it grew larger and was a gull with folded wings. At last in the rising sun it became what it really was—a red ship with two red sails. My brother and I had gone to the head of a canyon that winds down to a little harbor which is called Coral Cove. We had gone to gather roots that grow there in the spring. My brother Ramo was only a little boy half my age, which was twelve. He was small for one who had lived so many suns and moons, but quick as a cricket. Also foolish as a cricket when he was excited. For this reason and because I wanted him to help me gather roots and not go running off, I said nothing about the shell I saw or the gull with folded wings. I went on digging in the brush with my pointed stick as though nothing at all were happening on the sea. Even when I knew for sure that the gull was a ship with two red sails. But Ramo’s eyes missed little in the world. They were black like a lizard’s and very large and, like the eyes of a lizard, could sometimes look sleepy. This was the time when they saw the most. This was the way they looked now. They were half-closed, like those of a lizard lying on a rock about to flick out its tongue to catch a fly. “The sea is smooth,” Ramo said. “It is a flat stone without any scratches.” My brother liked to pretend that one thing was another. “The sea is not a stone without scratches,” I said. “It is water and no waves.” “To me it is a blue stone,” he said. “And far away on the edge of it is a small cloud which sits on the stone.” “Clouds do not sit on stones. On blue ones or black ones or any kind of stones.” “This one does.” “Not on the sea,” I said. “Dolphins sit there, and gulls, and cormorants, and otter, and whales too, but not clouds.” “It is a whale, maybe.” Ramo was standing on one foot and then the other, watching the ship coming, which he did not know was a ship because he had never seen one. I had never seen one either, but I knew how they looked because I had been told. “While you gaze at the sea,” I said, “I dig roots. And it is I who will eat them and you who will not.” Ramo began to punch at the earth with his stick, but as the ship came closer, its sails showing red through the morning mist, he kept watching it, acting all the time as if he were not. “Have you ever seen a red whale?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, though I never had. “Those I have seen are gray.” “You are very young and have not seen everything that swims in the world.” Ramo picked up a root and was about to drop it into the basket. Suddenly his mouth opened wide and then closed again. “A canoe!” he cried. “A great one, bigger than all of our canoes together. And red!” A canoe or a ship, it did not matter to Ramo. In the very next breath he tossed the root in the air and was gone, crashing through the brush, shouting as he went. I kept on gathering roots, but my hands trembled as I dug in the earth, for I was more excited than my brother. I knew that it was a ship there on the”
― Scott O'Dell, quote from Island of the Blue Dolphins
“Art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudointellectual masturbation . . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce -- render emotional -- his audience, each time.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Stranger in a Strange Land
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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