Emma Hooper · 305 pages
Rating: (8.9K votes)
“We're all scared most of the time. Life would be lifeless if we weren't. Be scared, and then jump into that fear. Again and again. Just remember to hold on to yourself while you do it.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“You told me, once, to just remember to breathe. As long as you can do that, you're doing something good.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“We have good days and bad days. You told me, once, to just remember to breathe. As long as you can do that, you’re doing something Good, you said. Getting rid of the old, and letting in the new. And, therefore, moving forward. Making progress. That’s all you have to do to move forward, sometimes, you said, just breathe. So don’t worry, Etta, if nothing else, I am still breathing.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“Go do whatever, wherever. Go do it alone, and now, because you want to and you're allowed to and you can.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“I have made you some things, for when you get back. I understand now, all the baking you sent me, stale and crumbled in brown paper and rough twine. Now you’re away and I am here. So I will make and make until you get back to remind you, and myself: there are reasons to come home.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“I am drawing a dotted line across our globe, starting from home here, out along what I imagine is your path.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“We're all scared most of the time. Life would be lifeless if we weren't.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“If we’re doing we’re living and if we’re living we’re winning, right?”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“In that night’s dream Etta was swimming or dancing, she couldn’t decide which, but it didn’t matter because they were, really, the same thing, only in swimming the water was your partner, all around, ready, following, light and easy and heavy and comforting and there in your arms and you in its arms and if you opened your mouth to sing along to the music it would rush in and tell you its secrets and taste like wine.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“I keep your photo in the pocket on the side without the gun. For balance.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“It took them longer, a week or so, to notice the hole in their language that this new word had made. To grasp that there was no term for a parent without a child, a sister without a sister.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“You can never stop being a mother. Never, never, never.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“The pain bursts through Etta like caffeine,”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“Toxemia. A word that starts so harsh and ends so gently.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“The students whipped their heads back to look at her; a blaspheming teacher was as exciting as a fight.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“People could say things about Owen. They could. But they don’t. We don’t. Words are strong. The strongest. Worse than bruises on”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“The radio was a beautiful thing. It was hodgepodge and patched up on the outside, but on the inside it was filled with voices, filled with people and music and ideas from away, from far away. Otto took a breath and turned it on.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“P.S. I know you have gone to see the water, and you should see it, Etta, you should, but, in case there are other reasons you’ve left, in case there are things you have discovered or undiscovered that you didn’t want to tell me in person, in that case, you can always tell me here. Tell me here and we can never mention it outside of paper and ink (or pencil).”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“Etta, it could be everything, it could be nothing, what you’re making up. You shouldn’t let that bother you.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“you’re doing something Good, you said. Getting rid of the old and letting in the new. And, therefore, moving forward. Making progress. That’s all you have to do to move forward, sometimes, you said, just breathe. So don’t worry, Etta, if nothing else, I am still breathing. You”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“Kneading, Otto thought as he moved his hands up and down in the dough, was the best part. It was the connection point, between you and the food.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“Otto's train was due in seven minutes. Etta stood on the platform and waited for the wind it would bring.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“Chickens, children, they're all the same.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“go do whatever, wherever. Go do it alone, and now, because you want to and you’re allowed to and you can.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“He put his hands on her arms, above the elbow, held them in, and kissed her mouth and kissed her and kissed so that neither of them could breathe and neither of them wanted to.”
― Emma Hooper, quote from Etta and Otto and Russell and James
“The shock was akin to that of buying, out of duty, a novel written by a dull and uninspired acquaintance and finding there passages of heartrending beauty and rapture that one could never imagine coming from such a tedious person.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, quote from The Confessions of Max Tivoli
“... now and again we would happen to step out of the familiar universe into a sudden sharp shock of sweetly scented air, sudden as spilled perfume, piercing as crystal, dark and sweet as the sound of oboes.”
― Steven Millhauser, quote from Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright
“Time, too, is a function of Shadow, and even Dworkin did not know all of its ins and outs. Or perhaps he did. Maybe that is what drove him mad.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from The Guns of Avalon
“As the Lebanese sociologist Samir Khalaf summed it up: “Though the average Lebanese derives much … social support and psychological reinforcement from … local and communal allegiances, these forces are the same elements that … prompt him on occasion to violate and betray his society’s normative standards. The Lebanese is being demoralized, in other words, by the very forces that are supposed to make him a more human and sociable being … The formation and deformation of Lebanon, so to speak, are rooted in the same forces.” I”
― quote from From Beirut to Jerusalem
“If we're going to survive as a planet with more than 6 billion people without destroying the complex balance of our natural ecosystems, the best way to do it is to crowd as many of those humans into metropolitan spaces and return the rest of the planet to Mother Nature.”
― Steven Johnson, quote from The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
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