“You could push people away, past their limits, even accidentally, and then it was just too late to get them back”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“Maybe children just want whatever it is they don't get. And then they grow up and give their children what they wanted, be it silence or information, affection or independence--so that child, in turn, craves something else. With every generation the pendulum swings from opposite to opposite, stillness and peace so elusive.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“She wondered when her daughter would realise that for the most part, people weren't that different. Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: The wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, she thought, was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future. While most older people believed that they lay in the past.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“Worrying was painful .... but compared to the alternative, a privilege”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“Well,” Leigh said, because there was nothing else. She looked back at the picture of herself and Pam in the blue dresses. “We did have it easier than she did. I’m sure we did. And I should thank her for that, I guess.”
Pam nodded. She looked calm, untroubled. Leigh, tapped her foot on the ottoman and glanced at her mother’s photographs. “But it felt like that was all she saw when she looked at us.” She leaned forward to get Pam’s attention. She wanted her sister to understand, to see things the way she had. “You know? I always felt like she never saw me, me as a individual. Do you know what I am saying? She gave us everything she ever wanted. But she never thought about what we wanted that it may be different. Or that we might need something that she didn’t. She never saw us separate from herself. She never saw us.” She paused, nodding in agreement with herself. That was it. She decided. She’d never put words to the feeling before, but that was it. That had been the whole trouble between them.
But when she looked back at Pam, her satisfaction vanished. Her sister’s mouth was pulled tight, her eyes wide. She looked away from Leigh, saying nothing, still the loyal confidante. But Leigh already knew. She knew what she couldn’t guess before, what Pam thought of the two of them on the porch swing, Kara talking, Pam listening. Leigh didn’t have to guess anymore. She could hear the words come out of her daughter’s mouth as clearly as they’d just come out of her own.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“Perhaps all the difficulties of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering in the early years wouldn’t”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“she also knew that the sadness she felt while pregnant, for strangers, for the entire world, did not feel like hormones so much as a kind of elevated consciousness, a heightened sensitivity to truth.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“The music machine played away - far away - and when I started to understand the lyrics of a Cocteau Twins song, I knew I was wrecked.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Crow Road
“When brought to meaning, all importance becomes small, as in death, all life seems nothing. Knowing is destroyed by thinking, not destroyed but sterilized; distilled into knowledge. Thinking, the processing of knowing to knowledge.”
― William Wharton, quote from Birdy
“Now, before you begin to worry, the section of the gaol that I’m standing in is completely secure. No problems here. I’m not in any danger whatsoever.”
“And the section I’m standing in?”
“Well,” he said, “the important thing to remember is that I’m perfectly safe.”
Valkyrie sighed. “I’m stuck in here with the bad guys, aren’t I?”
“Or you could be glass-half-full about it and say that they are stuck in there with you. Which might make you feel better.”
― Derek Landy, quote from Kingdom of the Wicked
“Ала за мен Златният храм не беше просто абстрактно понятие. Планините го скриваха от погледа ми, но при желание винаги можех да отида и да го видя. В този смисъл красотата бе все пак нещо, което можех да пипна в ръка, да видя с очите си. Знаех и вярвах, че храмът е неизменен и вечен независимо от всевъзможните промени на този свят.
Понякога си представях, че е изящна миниатюра, която мога да взема в ръка; друг път той ставаше огромен и чудовищен и върхът му се губеше в небесата. Бях твърде млад, за да си давам ясна сметка, че красотата не може да е нито малка, нито голяма, а винаги умерена. Лете, видех ли влажно от утринната роса цвете, излъчващо сякаш бледо сияние, веднага си казвах, че е прекрасно като Златния храм. А когато над отсрещните хълмове се събираха черни, раздирани от светкавици буреносни облаци, опасани със златен кант, мрачното им великолепие също ме навеждаше на мисълта за него. Стигна се дотам, че и при вида на нечие красиво лице в душата си прошепвах: „Очарователно като Златния храм.”
― Yukio Mishima, quote from The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
“THERE ARE ENORMOUS HOLES IN MY EDUCATION. I left college in March of my freshman year and never went back. I’ve never read Moby-Dick and it’s probably too late now. I know nothing about the history of music or the history of art except what I’ve learned through osmosis. But Outsider Art is its own context. I don’t have to know all about the Impressionists or the Abstract Expressionists. I don’t have to be able to fit this art into any historic chronology. I don’t feel like an ignoramus. Irony of ironies, I don’t feel like an outsider—to fall in love I only need eyes.”
― quote from A Three Dog Life
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.
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