Quotes from The Short Life of Sparrows

Emm Cole ·  431 pages

Rating: (251 votes)


“...our souls may be consumed by shadows, but that doesn't mean we have to behave as monsters.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows


“There's never going to be someone else," he says, shaking his head. "You've wrecked me. I wouldn't be any good to anybody now—except for you.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows


“Let the whole world knock. I'm not opening that door.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows


“A Seer dreams of all kinds of endings, but never a happy one for herself.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows


“And here I am, bravely risking the fallout of wounding your fragile, pudding-like soul—because real, forever friends don’t let each other wear ugly hats. I’ve wanted to say it for a month now, and I can bear it no longer. I know my witch is showing, but please take that thing off your head.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows



“I think the purest of souls, those with the most fragile of hearts, must be meant for a short life. They can't be tethered or held in your palm. Just like a sparrow, they light on your porch. Their song might be brief, but how greedy would we be to ask for more? No, you cannot keep a sparrow. You can only hope that as they fly away, they take a little bit of you with them.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows


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Popular quotes

“Imagine you're in a rowing boat on a lake.
It's summer, early morning. That time when the sun hasn't quite broken free of the landscape and long, projected shadows tigerstripe the light. The rays are warm on your skin as you drift through them, but in the shadows the air is still cold, greyness holding onto undersides and edges wherever it can.
A low clinging breeze comes and goes, racing ripples across the water and gently rocking you and your boat as you float in yin-yang slices of morning. Birds are singing. It's a sharp, clear sound, clean without the humming backing track of a day well underway. There's the occasional sound of wind in leaves and the occasional slap-splash of a larger wavelet breaking on the side of your boat, but nothing else.
You reach over the side and feel the shock of the water, the steady bob of the lake's movement playing up and down your knuckles in a rhythm of cold. You pull your arm back; you enjoy the after-ache in your fingers. Holding out your hand, you close your eyes and feel the tiny physics of gravity and resistance as the liquid finds routes across your skin, builds itself into droplets of the required weight, then falls, each drop ending with an audible tap.
Now, right on that tap - stop. Stop imagining. Here's the real game. Here's
what's obvious and wonderful and terrible all at the same time: the lake in my head, the lake I was imagining, has just become the lake in your head. It doesn't matter if you never know me, or never know anything about me. I could be dead, I could have been dead a hundred years before you were even born and still - think about this carefully, think past the obvious sense of it to the huge and amazing miracle hiding inside - the lake in my head has become the lake in your head.”
― Steven Hall, quote from The Raw Shark Texts


“Holding on to things only breaks your heart.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The Time Keeper


“que algo te incomode no significa que debas ignorarlo”
― John Katzenbach, quote from The Analyst


“We spread the time as we can, but in the end the world takes it all back.”
― Stephen King, quote from Wolves of the Calla


“After that, the book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind. But I hope you will remember this:
A man walking fast down a dark lonely street. Quick steps and hard breathing, all wonder and need. A bell above a door and the tinkle it makes. A clerk and a ladder and warm golden light, and then: the right book exactly, at exactly the right time.”
― Robin Sloan, quote from Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore


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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.

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