Quotes from The Lucy Variations

“The world was full of beauty.

She wanted to grab hold of it and take it down into her bones. Yet always it seemed beyond her grasp. Sometimes only by a little, like now. The thinnest membrane.

Usually, though, by miles.

She couldn’t expect to be that kind of happy all the time. She knew that.

But sometimes you could. Sometimes you should be allowed a tiny bit of joy that should stay with you for more than five minutes. That wasn’t too much to ask. To have a moment like this, and be able to hold on to it.

To cross that membrane, and feel alive.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“There's a lot that is awful. That's the struggle of getting old. To make sure you don't let what's hard...obscure the beauty.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“Or she could return to the beginning, to the first moment she`d started to feel like playing wasn`t for her anymore. But she coudn`t rehash every hurt, every disappointment, every moment that felt like betrayal. And expect to arrive anywhere good.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“Love.
That was the piece that had been missing, way before Prague. That was that piece that had been missing in her life until Will came and made her feel it, for their work together and for the beauty and also for him, though it was hard sometimes to separate those things. Maybe she didn`t love Will like she thought. Or couldn’t in this moment.
But what they’d done together, what had been open by becoming so close, she could still love that. She could love their conversations and their hours at the piano and the results of their work. She could even love the way it hurt right now, because when was the last time she gave her whole heart to something?
That, all of it, belonged to her. She didn’t have to let Will take it away, the way she’d let her grandfather, the business, herself, take her love for music.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“Why do people...we...why do we drag around like life is so awful?' Why did they forget that there was so much to love? He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'I guess...because there's a lot that is awful. That's the struggle of getting old. To make sure you don't let what's hard or painful or whatever obscure the beauty.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“The sight of them (her friends) let a little air into her soul.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“That's what music did. It made you feel.
...
Music, her grandfather always told her, was language. A special language, a gift from the Muses, something all people are born understanding but few people can thoroughly translate.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“You are beautiful, Lucy. Inside and out. And that hurts, too. It hurts more specifically. More personally.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“Das wird sich alles finden.
Everything will be okay.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“Why do we drag around like life is so awful?' Why did they forget that there was so much to love?”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

“Because every thought she had, everything she observed around her, every conversation, every experience, everything that made her laugh - she imagined telling him, or him watching. She wanted herself, the particular way he saw her and the way she like to be seen by him, reflected back, over and over.
It was like there was this letter to him in her head that she was always writing and never getting to send.
It reminded her of being a kid and making a new best friend, how the two of you made your own world with just that person, and never wanted to leave it.
And though she'd never been in love, it reminded her of that, too.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from The Lucy Variations

About the author

Popular quotes

“No... it’s lovely here when the dark is your friend, isn’t it? When you turn on the light, it makes the dark your enemy... and it glowers in at you resentfully.”
― L.M. Montgomery, quote from The Complete Anne of Green Gables Boxed Set

“You ever wonder what a Martian might think if he happened to land near an emergency room? He’d see an ambulance whizzing in and everybody running out to meet it, tearing the doors open, grabbing up the stretcher, scurrying along with it. ‘Why,’ he’d say, ‘what a helpful planet, what kind and helpful creatures.’ He’d never guess we’re not always that way; that we had to, oh, put aside our natural selves to do it. ‘What a helpful race of beings,’ a Martian would say. Don’t you think so?”
― Anne Tyler, quote from The Accidental Tourist

“The terrace and the whole place, the lawn and the garden beyond it, all I could see of the park, were empty with a great emptiness.”
― Henry James, quote from The Turn of the Screw

“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from The Dispossessed

“Find x if (x)=2sin3x,over the domain -2piX=Beth

'Stop goofing around!',I said.
'I'm not! I'm stating the truth.You're my solution to everything',Xavier replied. 'The end result is always you.X always equals Beth.”
― Alexandra Adornetto, quote from Halo

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

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.