“Who can really say how decisions are made, how emotions change, how ideas arise? We talk about inspiration; about a bolt of lightnng from a clear sky, but perhaps everything is just as simple and just as infinitely complex as the processes that make a particular leaf fall at a particularmoment. That point has been reached, that's all. It has to happen, and it does happen.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“Land and sea.
We may think of them as opposites; as complements. But there is a difference in how we think of them; the sea, and the land.
If we are walking around in a forest, a meadow or a town, we see our surroundings as being made up of individual elements. There are many different kinds of trees in varying sizes, those buildings, these streets. The meadow, the flowers, the bushes. Our gaze lingers on details, and if we are standing in a forest in the autumn, we become tongue-tied if we try to describe the richness around us. All this exists on land.
But the sea. The sea is something completely different. The sea is one.
We may note the shifting moods of the sea. What the sea looks like when the wind is blowing, how the sea plays with the light, how it rises and falls. But still it is always the sea we are talking about. We have given different parts of the sea different names for navigation and identification, but if we are standing before the sea, there is only one whole. The Sea.
If we are taken so far out in a small boat that no land is visible in any direction, we may catch sight of the sea. It is not a pleasant experience. The sea is a god, an unseeing, unhearing deity that does not even know we exist. We mean less than a grain of sand on an elephant's back, and if the sea wants us, it will take us. That's just the way it is. The sea knows no limits, makes no concessions. It has given us everything and it can take everything away from us.
To other gods we send our prayer: Protect us from the sea.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“This wasn't the way he had expected his life to be. It worked, but that was about all. Happiness had got lost somewhere along the way.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“A new life? There’s not such thing.
It was only in the magazine headlines that people got a new life. Stopped drinking or taking drugs, found a new love. But the same life.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“That's what love looks like. It can happen. Two people can find one another, and then work together to sustain that amorphous, incomprehensible third party that has arisen between them. Love becomes an entity unto itself; the thing that determines how life is to be lived.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“It was as if she lived only on clear, salty air, and when the day came for her to pass away, she would probably do exactly that. Just take a step to one side. Dissolve into a north-westerly wind as it whirled around the lighthouse at North Point, then out across the sea.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“But love? Who can say what is just a mire of dark needs and desires, and what is true love? Does such a thing exist? Can't it be that if we say, 'I love you' to another person and know that we mean it, then that is love, regardless of the motive?”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“When it comes to life, all you can change is the equivalent of furniture, paint and windows. Doors, maybe. Change the things that are in too bad a state and hope the core holds.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“Att han varit rädd för GB-gubben och rabblat Alfonsramsor, att han börjat bygga med pärlor och att allt han ville var att ligga i hennes säng och läsa Bamse. Jag är så liten.
Äntligen förstod han vad det betydde:
Bär mej.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“This time he shouted a little more loudly, and his heart began to beat a little more quickly. It was foolish, of course. There was no chance she could have got lost here.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“Pero están atados a la tierra por una cadena invisible y solo pueden escudriñar un mar deshabitado en perpetua calma.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“Los breves instantes en los que uno no tiene que comportarse como una persona mayor y responsable. Hay que aprovecharlos.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
“Es extraño, ¿no? Se puede vivir toda la vida con una persona. Y, sin embargo, no conocerla. No conocerla en realidad.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Harbour
John Ajvide Lindqvist
Born place: in Blackeberg, Sweden
Born date December 2, 1968
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“Raising one hand, he tilts his hat to that sexy slant. "You want me. Admit it."
Even if he's partly right, I'll never tell him. "Why would I want you?"
He lifts three fingers to countdown. "Mysterious. Rebellious. Troubled. All those qualities women find irresistible."
"Such an optimist."
"My cup is never empty."
"Too bad your brain is." The words bite, but my smile softens with affection.”
― A.G. Howard, quote from Splintered
“I know I would crumble if I lost you.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Enna Burning
“Oh, that," said the king with a shrug. "That isn't your honor, Costis. That's the public perception of your honor. It has nothing to do with anything important, except perhaps for manipulating fools who mistake honor for its bright, shiny trappings. You can always change the perceptions of fools.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, quote from The King of Attolia
“She looked at me and smiled and said
"Are you ready?"
And I was.
I finally was.
I had never been more ready in my life.
Yeah...
This girl.
My mother would have loved this girl.
Too bad she was just a dream.”
― Colleen Hoover, quote from This Girl
“On the raptors kept for falconry:
"They talk every night, deep into the darkness. They say about how they were taken, about what they can remember about their homes, about their lineage and the great deeds of their ancestors, about their training and what they've learned and will learn. It is military conversation, really, like what you might have in the mess of a crack cavalry regiment: tactics, small arms, maintenance, betting, famous hunts, wine, women, and song. Another subject they have is food. It is a depressing thought," he continued, "but of course they are mainly trained by hunger. They are a hungry lot, poor chaps, thinking of the best restaurants where they used to go, and how they had champagne and caviar and gypsy music. Of course, they all come from noble blood."
"What a shame that they should be kept prisoners and hungry."
"Well, they do not really understand that they are prisoners any more than the cavalry officers do. They look on themselves as being 'dedicated to their profession,' like an order of knighthood or something of that sort. You see, the member of the Muse [where Raptors are kept for falconry] is restricted to the Raptors, and that does help a lot. They know that none of the lower classes can get in. Their screened perches do not carry Blackbirds or such trash as that. And then, as for the hungry part, they're far from starving or that kind of hunger: they're in training, you know! And like everybody in strict training, they think about food.”
― T.H. White, quote from The Sword in the Stone
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