Quotes from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“I think maybe miracles are something everybody has to find out about for themselves. Telling them about it doesn’t make them believe. It just makes them think you’re crazy as a bessie bug.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“September showed up right on schedule, and lasted a whole month.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“They’d have people out looking for her, and nothing makes grown-ups quite so mad as finding a child safe when they’d been scared silly that they might find that child dead.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“And that's the way things have gone along from that day until this. Not staying the same, but always changing. And that's okay, because once one part of a thing changes, all the other pieces begin to shift, and pretty soon it's a whole new story.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“Moses Never Closes was something folks counted on. It was a certain place in an uncertain world. Folks wanted it to stay the way it was, because once you change one part of a thing, all the other parts begin to shift, and pretty soon, you just don’t know what’s what anymore.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“She was the most alone person he had ever met - so intent on staying forever breathtaking that she could never let any of life's glories take her own breath away.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“And she knew Life well enough to know that if one person in a house gets really miserable for any length of time, the misery spreads like smallpox.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“If you watch what the birds and wild animals do, you can survive pretty much anywhere, because they know things humans have forgotten, such as what’s poisonous and what’s not, and what it means when things suddenly get too quiet, and where to hide when what it means is danger.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“Willadee asked him if he thought maybe it should say HAPPY EVER AFTER, but Samuel said no, he thought happiness was like any other miracle. The more you talked about it, the less people believed it was real. It was like Swan said, some things, everybody just had to find out about for themselves.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“You expect us to believe the damnedest things.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“Whatever it was, Calla's imagination had waked up from a long sleep, and these days she had the feeling that magic and miracles might be hovering in the air all around, waiting to happen. She wasn't a great believer in such things, but she didn't push the thought away.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“If You are love, he roared, then love ain't much to crow about.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“You don't go around questioning the Bible, not if you want to go to Heaven one of these days. Besides, once you start picking holes in things, it's hard to figure out which parts to throw away and which parts to keep.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“And that’s the way things have gone along from that day until this. Not staying the same, but always changing. And that’s okay, because once one part of a thing changes, all the other pieces begin to shift, and pretty soon it’s a whole new story.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“For Swan's birthday, Calla made pineapple upside-down cake, which is not the kind of cad you put candles on. So there was nothing to blow and make wishes on. Nobody missed the candles, because when you're eating pineapple upside-down cake, there is nothing much left to wish for”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

“An electrical cord doesn’t have to carry a charge in order to be dangerous. It can still be used to tie people up. And strangle them.”
― Jenny Wingfield, quote from The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

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Popular quotes

“If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, quote from Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

“The alley is a pitch for about twenty women leaning in doorways, chain-smoking. In their shiny open raincoats, short skirts, cheap boots, and high-heeled shoes they watch the street with hooded eyes, like spies in a B movie. Some are young and pretty, and some are older, and some of them are very old, with facial expressions ranging from sullen to wry. Most of the commerce is centred on the slightly older women, as if the majority of the clients prefer experience and worldliness. The younger, prettier girls seem to do the least business, apparent innocence being only a minority preference, much as it is for the aging crones in the alley who seem as if they’ve been standing there for a thousand years.

In the dingy foyer of the hotel is an old poster from La Comédie Française, sadly peeling from the all behind the desk. Cyrano de Bergerac, it proclaims, a play by Edmond Rostand. I will stand for a few moments to take in its fading gaiety. It is a laughing portrait of a man with an enormous nose and a plumed hat. He is a tragic clown whose misfortune is his honour. He is a man entrusted with a secret; an eloquent and dazzling wit who, having successfully wooed a beautiful woman on behalf of a friend cannot reveal himself as the true author when his friend dies. He is a man who loves but is not loved, and the woman he loves but cannot reach is called Roxanne.

That night I will go to my room and write a song about a girl. I will call her Roxanne. I will conjure her unpaid from the street below the hotel and cloak her in the romance and the sadness of Rostand’s play, and her creation will change my life.”
― Sting, quote from Broken Music

“Dr Gall: Hoši, je to zločin staré Evropy, že naučila Roboty válčit! Nemohli už dát, u čerta, pokoj s tou svou politikou? To byl zločin, udělat z živé práce vojáky!
Alquist: Zločin byl vyrábět Roboty!
Domin: Cože?
Alquist: Zločin byl vyrábět Roboty!
Domin: Ne. Alquiste, ani dnes toho nelituju.
Alquist: Ani dnes?
Domin: Ani dnes, v poslední den civilizace. Byla to veliká věc.”
― Karel Čapek, quote from R.U.R.

“And after we returned to the savannahs and abandoned the trees, did we long for those great graceful leaps and ecstatic moments of weightlessness in the shafts of sunlight of the forest roof?”
― Carl Sagan, quote from Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“Sometimes you gotta bust apart to get yourself put back together.”
― Alden Bell, quote from The Reapers are the Angels

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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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