Quotes from Penpal

252 pages

Rating: (9.5K votes)


“We want so badly to be happy – to live the kinds of lives that we always hoped we’d live – that we give gifts to ourselves by remembering things not as they were, but as we wish they were.”
― quote from Penpal


“Truth to tell, at any point in our lives we’ve forgotten more than we know about our own history. The world moves on, and so do we, and what was once important fades away.”
― quote from Penpal


“Sometimes forgetting is the gift that we give ourselves”
― quote from Penpal


“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself. – Harlan Ellison”
― quote from Penpal


“Our loved ones pass away or simply leave our lives forever too soon, and we think to ourselves, “I wasn’t ready for you to leave. It just wasn’t time,” because we’re never truly ready, because it’s never truly time.
So we keep them in our memories.
And when we regret that we don’t have more memories of them, maybe our minds give us more gifts; gradually we find ourselves remembering them being with us in times and places that they couldn’t have been, and gradually we stop correcting ourselves because, well, we want them to have been there.”
― quote from Penpal



“It’s a bit poetic that it is so easy to take advantage of those who have no advantages to begin with.”
― quote from Penpal


“The world is a cruel place made crueler still by man.”
― quote from Penpal


“a can-opener with no tuna made no sense to Boxes.”
― quote from Penpal


“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
― quote from Penpal


“Our loved ones pass away or simply leave our lives forever too soon, and we think to ourselves, “I wasn’t ready for you to leave. It just wasn’t time,” because we’re never truly ready, because it’s never truly time. So we keep them in our memories.”
― quote from Penpal



“How far can you go into the woods?”
― quote from Penpal


“Memories extend our lives backward through time, making them feel longer.”
― quote from Penpal


“far can you go into the woods?”
― quote from Penpal


“Our minds work hard to avoid dissonance – if we hold a belief strongly enough, our minds will forcefully reject conflicting evidence so that we can maintain the integrity of our understanding of the world.”
― quote from Penpal


“Right as my eyes were about to move onto the next photo in the sequence, they froze and focused on something that vexed me so powerfully that I can now, as I write this, distinctly remember feeling dizzy and capable of only a single, repeating thought. Why am I in this picture?”
― quote from Penpal



“When you try to reconstruct the series, you find that it isn’t complete, but maybe this never really bothers you, because you can’t miss what you don’t remember.”
― quote from Penpal


Popular quotes

“She mediated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys and trap-doors.”
― Jane Austen, quote from Northanger Abbey


“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.

Daniel H. Burnham”
― Erik Larson, quote from The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America


“Luck, you see, brings bitter friends.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Pearl


“the first sign of something peculiar —a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr. Dursley didn’t realize what he had seen —then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr. Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr. Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from Harry Potter Boxset


“Do you think any of us know how to love?! Do you think anybody would ever do anything if they waited until they knew how to love?! Do you think that babies would ever get made or meals cooked or crops planed or books written or what God-damn-have-you? Do you think people would even get out of bed in the morning if they waited until they knew how to love? You have had too much therapy. Or not enough. God knows how to love, kiddo. The rest of us are only good actors.

Forget love. Try good manners.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood


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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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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