“No one can hurt you as badly as the people you love.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“It had become one of the defining truths of my life that, no matter how I tried to keep them flattened, two-dimensional, jailed in paper and ink, there would always be stories that refused to stay bound inside books. It was never just a story. I would know: a story had swallowed my whole life.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“To some it might’ve seemed callous, the way she boxed up her pain and set it aside, but I knew her well enough now to understand. She had a heart the size of France, and the lucky few whom she loved with it were loved with every square inch—but its size made it dangerous, too. If she let it feel everything, she’d be wrecked. So she had to tame it, shush it, shut it up. Float the worst pains off to an island that was quickly filling with them, where she would go to live one day.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“An opportunist disguised as a friend can be every bit as dangerous as an outright enemy.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“And it occured to me, standing there, just breathing with her, quiet settling around us, that those might be the three most beautiful words in the English language. We have time.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Maybe," she said. "Maybe. But now you're making promises you might not be able to keep, and that's how people in love get very badly hurt.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Early in life we recognize certain talents in ourselves, and we focus on those to the exclusion of others. It’s not that nothing else is possible, but that nothing else was nurtured.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“She had this amazing capacity to turn sadness into anger and anger into action, which meant nothing ever kept her down for long.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Doubt is the pinprick in the life raft.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“What a beautiful day to go to hell”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Emma laughed darkly. "It's a completely mad idea, I know. But my brain is a hope-making engine."
"I'm so glad," I said. "Mine is a worst-case-scenario generator."
"We need each other, then."
"Yes. But we already knew that, I think.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“These strange-looking people weren’t peculiars. They were nerds. We were very much in the present.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“I felt like one of those mythical heroes who fights his way back from the underworld only to realize that the world above is every bit as damned as the one below.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“There was, in fact, a street sign to that effect—the first I’d seen in all of Devil’s Acre. Louche Lane, it read in fancy handwritten script. Piracy discouraged.
“Discouraged?” I said. “Then what’s murder? Frowned upon?”
“I believe murder is ‘tolerated with reservations.’ ”
“Is anything illegal here?” Addison asked.
“Library late fines are stiff. Ten lashes a day, and that’s just for paperbacks.”
“There’s a library?”
“Two. Though one won’t lend because all the books are bound in human skin and quite valuable.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Maybe lots of people go through life never knowing they’re peculiar.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“There was something sweet about holding a tangible thing that had been touched and marked upon by someone I loved.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Ahh,” Sharon said airily from the corner, “the sweet lies lovers tell …”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“my brain is a hope-making engine.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Early in life we recognize certain talents in ourselves, and we focus on those to the exclusion of others. It's not that nothing else is possible, but that nothing else was nurtured.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“I was the perfect automaton: blessed with ability but cursed with ignorance.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“The trouble with the merely unwise/deeply stupid line is that you often don’t know which side you’re on until it’s too late.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“I hate fleeing as much as anyone,” I said, “but Emma and I look like nineteenth-century axe murderers, and you’re a dog who wears glasses. We’re bound to be noticed.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Just a story. It had become one of the defining truths of my life that, no matter how I tried to keep them flattened, two-dimensional, jailed in paper and ink, there would always be stories that refused to stay bound inside books. It was never just a story. I would know: a story had swallowed my whole life.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Just because I’m a capitalist doesn’t mean I’m a black-hearted bastard.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Never mind compassion! Fie on loyalty! If you’re as intelligent and ambitious a fellow as I think you are, then you’ll recognize an extraordinary opportunity for advancement when you see one.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“She had a heart the size of France, and the lucky few whom she loved with it were loved with every square inch—but its size made it dangerous, too. If she let it feel everything, she’d be wrecked. So she had to tame it, shush it, shut it up. Float the worst pains off to an island that was quickly filling with them, where she would go to live one day.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“I didn’t want to kill the hollow any more than I wanted to kill a strange animal. In the course of leading this creature around by the nose, I had gotten close enough to understand that there was more than just void inside it. There was a tiny spark, a little marble of soul at the bottom of a deep pool. It wasn’t hollow—not really.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Just a story. It had become one of the defining truths of my life that, no matter how I tried to keep them flattened, two-dimensional, jailed in paper and ink, there would always be stories that refused to stay bound inside books. It was never just a story.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“Why did we have more than we knew what to do with, while they had less than they needed to stay alive?”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
“I believe murder is ‘tolerated with reservations.’ ” “Is anything illegal here?” Addison asked. “Library late fines are stiff. Ten lashes a day, and that’s just for paperbacks.” “There’s a library?” “Two. Though one won’t lend because all the books are bound in human skin and quite valuable.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Library of Souls
Ransom Riggs
Born place: in The United States
Born date February 3, 1979
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“In evolutionary terms, that means we asked for it.”
― Sharon Moalem, quote from Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease
“I am, of course, aware that for over two hundred years scholars have laboured to keep history and theology, or history and faith, at arm’s length from one another. There is a good intention behind this move: each of these disciplines has its own proper shape and logic, and cannot simply be turned into a branch of the other.”
― N.T. Wright, quote from The Resurrection of the Son of God
“Men are excessively ruthless and cruel not as a rule out of malice but from outraged righteousness. How much more is this true of legally constituted states, invested with all this seeming moral authority of parliaments and congresses and courts of justice! The destructive capacity of an individual, however vicious, is small; of the state, however well-intentioned, almost limitless. Expand the state and the destructive capacity necessarily expands too. Collective righteousness is far more ungovernable than any individual pursuit of revenge. That was a point well understood by Woodrow Wilson, who warned: 'Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.”
― Paul Johnson, quote from Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties
“Isn't a gay Mormon like an oxymoron?'
'Do I look like an oxymoron to you?'
'An oxymormon.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Jesus didn't really die-someone gave him a long drug that made him look like dead, and he revived in the tomb. Answer: Roman soldiers knew how to kill people, and no disciple would have been fooled by a half-drugged, beat-up Jesus into thinking he'd defeated death and inaugurated the kingdom.”
― N.T. Wright, quote from Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
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The Shell Seekers
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