Holly Bourne · 448 pages
Rating: (4.9K votes)
“Being interesting isn't important. But being happy is. As well as being a person you're proud of”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Choose life. Choose love. And always remember to live.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Life doesn't happen to you. You can't just sit on a park bench and expect amazing things to whizz by on a conveyor belt. Life is what you put into it.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“I'm terrified that my journey won't tie up all the loose ends nicely. Because this is a life, not just a story, and life doesn't always go the way stories tell you.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Trauma. It doesn't eke itself out over time. It doesn't split itself manageably into bite-sized chunks and distribute itself equally throughout your life.
Trauma is all or nothing. A tsunami wave of destruction.
A tornado of unimaginable awfulness that whooshes into your life - just for one key moment - and wreaks such havoc that, in just an instant, your whole world will never be the same again.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Time can be strange sometimes. It can leave imprints in particular places, leaving ghosts of memories trapped.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Love, as always, is what it comes down to. You have to love. It's the only way. Love for life. Love for others. And, most importantly, love for yourself.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Writing's much more romantic when its pen and ink and paper. It's... More timeless. and worthwhile. Think about it. There are so many words gushing out into the universe these days. All digitally. All in Comic Sans or Times New Roman. Silly Websites. Stupid news stories digitally uploaded to a 24-hour channel. Where's all this writing going? Who's keeping a note of it all? Who's in charge of deciding what's worthwhile and what isn't? But back then... Back then, if someone wanted to write something they had to buy paper. Buy it! And ink. And a pen. And they couldn't waste too many sheets cos it was expensive. So when people wrote, they wrote because it was worthwhile... not just because they had some half-baked idea and they wanted to pointlessly prove their existence by sharing it on some bloody social networking site.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Who cares what a writer looks like as long as their words are beautiful?”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Life is so bloody hard. I don't want the whole struggle to be pointless. If I'm going to get crap thrown at me from great heights my whole life, well, I want to damn well make sure I leave a mark on this world in exchange for all the misery.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Reality doesn't wait for you to be ready for it. It doesn't go away when you tell it to. It's like a persistent mosquito, determined to suck your blood and leave you with a bumpy itch that you can't stop scratching.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Being interesting isn't important. But being happy is. As well as being a person you're proud of.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Nobody tells you that large houses have this horrible habit of making you feel utterly alone.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“But what if you needed to get what you want... just once?”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“I will always try to live.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“It's not going to be easy. But then interesting things never are, are they?”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“My life is so crap that i cant even think of ten stupid things that can give me reason not to be miserable.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“She needed to understand her pain and why it had brought her here.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“Do you think maybe your writing isn't going anymore because you're unhappy? Because you're not living the life you could? A life worth writing about? You must know that cliche-write what you know-but what do you know, Bree, when you shut the world out?”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“I'm boring. I'm a nobody. I don't live life. I don't embrace life.”
― Holly Bourne, quote from The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
“The other Dona was dead too, and this woman who had taken her place was someone who lived with greater intensity, with greater depth, bringing to every thought and every action a new richness of feeling, and an appreciation, half sensuous in its quality, of all the little things that came to make her day.”
― Daphne du Maurier, quote from Frenchman's Creek
“Lately I've become so damned distracted that I can't make a decision about anything. I can't think clearly. I've got knots in my stomach, and constant pains in my chest, and whenever I see you talking to any man, or smiling at anyone, I go insane with jealousy. I can't live this way. I—" He broke off and stared at her incredulously. "Damn it, Evie, what is there for you to smile about?"
"Nothing," she said, hastily tucking the sudden smile back into the corners of her mouth. "It's just… it sounds as if you're trying to say that you love me.”
― Lisa Kleypas, quote from Devil in Winter
“In every remote corner of the world there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving threatened species. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction.
But why do they bother? Does it really matter if the Yangtze river dolphin, or the kakapo, or the northern white rhino, or any other species live on only in scientists' notebooks?
Well, yes, it does. Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients or many industrial processes. Ironically, it is often not the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most.
Even so, the loss of a few species may seem irrelevant compared to major environmental problems such as global warming or the destruction of the ozone layer. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving.
There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from Last Chance to See
“It's what's buried deep inside that frightens me because it's broken, like a shattered mirror.”
― Jessica Sorensen, quote from The Secret of Ella and Micha
“How can a man know what is good or best for him, and yet chronically fail to act upon his knowledge?”
― Aristotle, quote from The Nicomachean Ethics
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.