“Mrs. May looked back at her. "Kate," she said after a moment, "stories never really end. They can go on and on and on. It's just that sometimes, at a certain point, one stops telling them.”
― Mary Norton, quote from The Borrowers
“...Borrower's don't steal."
"Except from human beings," said the boy.
Arrietty burst out laughing; she laughed so much that she had to hide her face in the primrose. "Oh dear," she gasped with tears in her eyes, "you are funny!" She stared upward at his puzzled face. "Human beans are for Borrowers - like bread's for butter!”
― Mary Norton, quote from The Borrowers
“The child is right," she announced firmly.
Arrietty's eyes grew big. "Oh, no-" she began. It shocked her to be right. Parents were right, not children. Children could say anything, Arrietty knew, and enjoy saying it-knowing always they were safe and wrong.”
― Mary Norton, quote from The Borrowers
“She learned a lot and some of the things she learned were hard to accept. She was made to realize once and for all that this earth on which they lived turning about in space did not revolve, as she had believed, for the sake of little people. “Nor for big people either,” she reminded the boy when she saw his secret smile.”
― Mary Norton, quote from The Borrowers
“Oh," he said again and picked up two petals of cherry blossom which he folded together like a sandwich and ate slowly. "Supposing," he said, staring past her at the wall of the house, "you saw a little man, about as tall as a pencil, with a blue patch in his trousers, halfway up a window curtain, carrying a doll's tea cup-would you say it was a fairy?"
"No," said Arrietty, "I'd say it was my father."
"Oh," said the boy, thinking this out, "does your father have a blue patch on his trousers?"
"Not on his best trousers. He does on his borrowing ones."
'Oh," said the boy again. He seemed to find it a safe sound, as lawyers do. "Are there many people like you?"
"No," said Arrietty. "None. We're all different."
"I mean as small as you?"
Arrietty laughed. "Oh, don't be silly!" she said. "Surely you don't think there are many people in the world your size?"
"There are more my size than yours," he retorted.
"Honestly-" began Arrietty helplessly and laughed again. "Do you really think-I mean, whatever sort of a world would it be? Those great chairs . . . I've seen them. Fancy if you had to make chairs that size for everyone? And the stuff for their clothes . . . miles and miles of it . . . tents of it ... and the sewing! And their great houses, reaching up so you can hardly see the ceilings . . . their great beds ... the food they eat ... great, smoking mountains of it, huge bogs of stew and soup and stuff."
"Don't you eat soup?" asked the boy.
"Of course we do," laughed Arrietty. "My father had an uncle who had a little boat which he rowed round in the stock-pot picking up flotsam and jetsam. He did bottom-fishing too for bits of marrow until the cook got suspicious through finding bent pins in the soup. Once he was nearly shipwrecked on a chunk of submerged shinbone. He lost his oars and the boat sprang a leak but he flung a line over the pot handle and pulled himself alongside the rim. But all that stock-fathoms of it! And the size of the stockpot! I mean, there wouldn't be enough stuff in the world to go round after a bit! That's why my father says it's a good thing they're dying out . . . just a few, my father says, that's all we need-to keep us. Otherwise, he says, the whole thing gets"-Arrietty hesitated, trying to remember the word-"exaggerated, he says-"
"What do you mean," asked the boy, " 'to keep us'?”
― Mary Norton, quote from The Borrowers
“I don't think human beans are all that bad-"
"They're bad and they're good," said Pod; "they're honest and they're artful- it's just as it takes them at the moment".”
― Mary Norton, quote from The Borrowers
“Human beans are for Borrowers—like bread’s for butter!”
― Mary Norton, quote from The Borrowers
“As people, other people, living in a house who . . . borrow things?"
Mrs. May laid down her work. "What do you think?" she asked.
"I don't know," Kate said, pulling hard at her shoe button. "There can't be. And yet"-she raised her head-"and yet sometimes I think there must be."
"Why do you think there must be?" asked Mrs. May.
"Because of all the things that disappear. Safety pins, for instance. Factories go on making safety pins, and every day people go on buying safety pins and yet, somehow, there never is a safety pin just when you want one. Where are they all? Now, at this minute? Where do they go to? Take needles," she went on. "All the needles my mother ever bought-there must be hundreds-can't just be lying about this house."
"Not lying about the house, no," agreed Mrs. May.
"And all the other things we keep on buying. Again and again and again. Like pencils and match boxes and sealing-wax and hairpins and drawing pins and thimbles-”
― Mary Norton, quote from The Borrowers
“would flower; and where birds came—and pecked”
― Mary Norton, quote from The Borrowers
Mary Norton
Born place: in Leighton Buzzard, The United Kingdom
Born date December 10, 1903
See more on GoodReads
“Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey, who was present at the meeting and who later became the authority on the battle of the Little Bighorn, recorded the aftermath. “This ‘talk’ of his [Custer’s] was considered at the time as something extraordinary for General Custer, for it was not his habit to unbosom himself to his officers. In it he showed concessions and a reliance on others; there was an indefinable something that was not Custer. His manner and tone, usually brusque and aggressive, or somewhat curt, was on this occasion conciliating and subdued. There was something akin to an appeal, as if depressed, that made a deep impression on all present. … Lieutenant Wallace and myself walked to our bivouac, for some distance in silence, when Wallace remarked: ‘Godfrey, I believe General Custer is going to be killed.’ ‘Why?’ I replied, ‘what makes you think so?’ ‘Because,’ said he, ‘I have never heard Custer talk in that way before.”
― Stephen E. Ambrose, quote from Crazy Horse and Custer
“He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would--for one heartbeat--flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.”
― Kristin Hannah, quote from Angel Falls
“I'd been chasing females all my life, not paying no mind to the fact that whatever's got tail at one end has teeth at the other, and now I was getting chomped.”
― Jim Thompson, quote from Pop. 1280 (Crime Masterworks)
“There is such sadness in his human eye that Tawaddud almost tells him the truth: that he should never marry a girl who loves only monsters. Then”
― Hannu Rajaniemi, quote from The Fractal Prince
“malfunction |malˈfə ng k sh ən| verb [ intrans. ] fail to function normally or satisfactorily”
― Lisa Alfonso, quote from Believe (Rules, #1)
The Bridges of Const...
In Her Shoes
The Mad Ship
Playing with Fire
Steelheart
The Infinite SeaBookQuoters 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.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
