“Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don't do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get a chance again.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“However much you love somebody, you should always keep a part of yourself to yourself. Never give it all. You can never be yourself otherwise.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“She was--I keep using the past tense; I ought to say she is--one of those people who, at first sight, look plain, are quiet, unassertive, unmemorable even. But who, when they start to talk and you get to know them, become more and more attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact they are beautiful. Not conventionally beautiful, not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“I don’t actually think “true love” is such a good term because love can only be true. If it isn’t true it can’t be love.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“And trust dies from ifs and buts”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“Life is not like a novel, but a novel can be like life. The best ones always are.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“The plain unwelcome fact is that sometimes life stymies you.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“Rooms are a fixed size, which can't be altered without pulling down walls and building new ones. They should be unchanging in shape and proportions. But sometimes they do change depending on who's in them.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“I sometimes wonder whether most people choose their hobbies because they lust after the gear more than for the benefits of the activities themselves.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“But the bit I liked best was where it said it's impossible to define love because it takes so many forms and is so complicated.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“In all our times together so far, this was the first time I felt we were enjoying ourselves, without strain or any sense of difference of age or deference, concession or inequality. It was, I thought afterwards, the first time we had met as ourselves, untrammelled, unguarded and in tune.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“Unfortunately, ..., all too often a joke tells the truth.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“when I am talking to myself, whom am I talking to and who is doing the talking? Are we all in fact two people, not one? Are we all One and Another? What I know is that I have an 'everyday self,' the one who does things, says things, deals with the ups and downs of daily life, and another, an 'inner self,' the one I think of as my real self, the self who observes everything my everyday self does and comments and judges, praises and dispraises, considers what would be best to do and not to do, and assesses the results.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
“No, but still, the fact is, at least this is how it seems to me, everybody has to learn about it [love] from scratch for themselves. And we all make the same mistakes time and again while we're learning.”
― Aidan Chambers, quote from Dying to Know You
Aidan Chambers
Born place: in Chester le Street, County Durham, England, The United Kingdom
Born date December 27, 1934
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“Let us imagine a coming generation with such intrepidity of vision, with such a heroic penchant for the tremendous; let us imagine the bold stride of these dragon-slayers, the proud audacity with which they turn their back on all the weakling's doctrines of optimism in order to 'live resolutely' in wholeness and fullness: would it not be necessary for the tragic man of such a culture, in view of his self-education for seriousness and terror, to desire a new art, the art of metaphysical comfort, to desire tragedy as his own proper Helen, and to exclaim with Faust:
Should not my longing overleap the distance
And draw the fairest form into existence?"
"Would it not be necessary?"--No, thrice no! O you young romantics: it would not be necessary! But it is highly probably that it will end that way, that you end that way--namely, "comforted," as it is written, in spite of all self-education for seriousness and terror, "comforted metaphysically"--in sum, as romantics end, as Christians.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Birth of Tragedy/The Case of Wagner
“There are no files in my memory that are repressed,' she asserted. 'You have files that are blocked. I have none so painful that they’re blocked. There are no secrets, no locked doors—nothing is hidden. I can infer that there are hidden areas in other people, so that they can’t bear to talk of certain things. The amygdala locks the files of the hippocampus. In me, the amygdala doesn’t generate enough emotion to lock the files of the hippocampus.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
“[U]nless one is to yield to biological determinism and accept that the possession of black sin creates a unique black mentality and character, it is hard to see what living connection exists between American blacks today and their heterogeneous West African ancestors three centuries ago. And biological determinism--the theory that race determines mentality--is of course just another word for racism. Biological determinism is exactly the theory apologists for slavery used in the American South before the Civil War. It is bizarre to hear blacks invoking the same theory today.”
― Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., quote from The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
“أحيانًا ، يخاف الناس من الأشخاص المختلفين عنهم . لا يعني ذلك أنهم سيئون ولكنهم ضيقو التفكير وحسب”
― Jodee Blanco, quote from Please Stop Laughing at Me... One Woman's Inspirational Story
“It was the first time in my life that I had been aware of my own existence. It was the first time in my life I had realized that I was alive. And if I was alive, then I could die, and I mean forever. Forever dead. Not heaven, not eternal life on some other plane…just darkness, curtain, scene. Permanently. And that was the key to my new religion, I figured. That’s why life was so fucking great. I want that day back. I want to be nine again and be told, Nomi: someday you’ll be gone, you’ll be dust, and then even less than dust. Nothing. There’s no other place to be. This world is good enough for you because it has to be. Go ahead and love it.”
― Miriam Toews, quote from A Complicated Kindness
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Crash & BurnBookQuoters 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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