“Everyone has their own music; they just don't realize it.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“Ethan seemed to revel in Carter's most hated tics. He'd set them to music. The light bounce of notes, starts and stops, of Ethan's song, it was the music of Carter's Tourette's, and Ethan had made it beautiful. He'd made Carter feel beautiful for having them.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“I’m almost a hermit and I need people. I can’t imagine what it’s like for a butterfly like you.”
Ethan’s mouth twitched and he smiled. “What color butterfly am I?”
Kneeling on the floor, Carter slid into Ethan’s arms. “Every color. You’re every one.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“And Mom doesn't like anyone cutting her flowers, so I cut up her magazines instead. Do you like it?”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“He’d never felt like this with any of them. If only he’d known what feeling to look for, he could have saved himself from hurt.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“Ethan rescued Carter now though, didn’t he? Or they rescued each other. It got too complicated for Carter to think about. They needed each other. It boiled down to that. That they wanted each other too was the bonus. Carter dreamed about Ethan, about his dick, his hands, as much now as he had before they were together.
There it was, a new Before, and now, a new After, one they could share. "I love you," Carter whispered. Ethan heard anyway and grinned down at Carter. Nothing mattered in the room except Ethan. Maybe nothing mattered in the world except Ethan.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“You make me feel like there is nothing wrong with me". "I want you every day". "Your ass is amazing". He put a smiley face on the last one”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“There were no strangers here tonight, only family. As he sang, Carter focused on sending the love he felt back out to Liz and Nolan, to Elliot and Jennifer, and Ethan, especially Ethan, who saw music in the sky and goodness in every person. Ethan, who had seen Carter in a way Carter had never seen himself, and showed Carter that he was more than a series of twitches and consonants.
Ethan, who Carter loved. Ethan, who loved Carter.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“Now, it felt like they were transferring their best qualities to each other, so Ethan felt strong and smart. Carter tapped the steering wheel as he drove, so Ethan tapped his knee, as if he could take away some of Carter's twiches, even though Ethan loved them as part of Carter. But, if they caused Carter pain, then Ethan would wish them away.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“Love? Carter hadn’t had any idea what it was, but now, he looked at Ethan and found a thousand definitions for it.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“It's been a slow road through his recovery, but he's the same person with a few alterations. Still my sweet boy.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“Somewhere, there are people like Carter and Ethan. And many more who are nothing like them. Maybe you know them. Maybe you are them. Either way, welcome.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“YOU need to shower before you go to your appointment,” Carter said. “You’re starting to attract flies.”
― Ryan Loveless, quote from Ethan, Who Loved Carter
“Must it ever be thus-that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment, a demon which perpetually pursues and harrasses me.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quote from The Sorrows of Young Werther
“Distance changes utterly when you take the world on foot. A mile becomes a long way, two miles literally considerable, ten miles whopping, fifty miles at the very limits of conception. The world, you realize, is enormous in a way that only you and a small community of fellow hikers know. Planetary scale is your little secret.
Life takes on a neat simplicity, too. Time ceases to have any meaning. When it is dark, you go to bed, and when it is light again you get up, and everything in between is just in between. It’s quite wonderful, really.
You have no engagements, commitments, obligations, or duties; no special ambitions and only the smallest, least complicated of wants; you exist in a tranquil tedium, serenely beyond the reach of exasperation, “far removed from the seats of strife,” as the early explorer and botanist William Bartram put it. All that is required of you is a willingness to trudge.
There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter.
At times, you become almost certain that you slabbed this hillside three days ago, crossed this stream yesterday, clambered over this fallen tree at least twice today already. But most of the time you don’t think. No point. Instead, you exist in a kind of mobile Zen mode, your brain like a balloon tethered with string, accompanying but not actually part of the body below. Walking for hours and miles becomes as automatic, as unremarkable, as breathing. At the end of the day you don’t think, “Hey, I did sixteen miles today,” any more than you think, “Hey, I took eight-thousand breaths today.” It’s just what you do.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from A Walk in the Woods
“Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, quote from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
“The Yanks always wore neckties that leapt out in front of their shirts, as if to announce the awkwardness to follow.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It's that simple. This suggests that it isn't love that is so important to us but the mystery itself. The love connection may be merely a device to put us in contact with the mystery, and we long for love to last so that the ecstacy of being near the mystery will last. It is contrary to the nature of mystery to stand still. Yet it's always there, somewhere, a world on the other side of the mirror (or the Camel pack), a promise in the next pair of eyes that smile at us. We glimpse it when we stand still.
The romance of new love, the romance of solitude, the romance of objecthood, the romance of ancient pyramids and distant stars are means of making contact with the mystery. When it comes to perpetuating it, however, I got no advice. But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know:
1. Everything is part of it.
2. It's never too late to have a happy childhood.”
― Tom Robbins, quote from Still Life with Woodpecker
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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