“That was what her parents did not understand—and had never understood—about stories. Liza told herself storied as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“There is a nocturna for every single person in the world! And each night the nocturni sip dreams from the River of Knowledge, and fly out into the world, and deliver them to their humans.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“They looked like butterflies, except that they had the long, pointed beaks of hummingbirds, and they seemed to be made out of darkness and air.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“Liza made a sudden decision. "I'll be your friend," she announced. she had trouble speaking the words but was glad once she had spoken them. She did not really want to be friends with an enormous rat of questionable sanity, but it seemed the right thing to say.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“It was strange how once you saw a rat wearing clothes, it became slightly disgusting to imagine the animal naked.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“Yes, the world was very strange. But you had to walk through. That was the trick. You had to keep walking through, always, with your chin held high, the way she had passed through the tunnels of the underworld, with only the dim light of the lumpen to guide her. That was the other trick, the other truth: Light would come to you from unexpected places.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“-"your nocturna will never take another human, not for all the length of time in the universe and beyond. Your nocturna is wedded to your soul. Some even say"..."that it is the nocturni who carry souls into the Shadow World when we die, where they will keep watch over them and keep them safe forever. Some say that is nocturni's ultimate purpose.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“Are seeds of hope, yes. Of course."..."The nocturni are the bearers of the hope seeds."..."That's why it's such bad luck to cross them...They carry the seeds Above, and plant them in souls where they're needed.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“The first thing she noticed were the lightbulbs in the ceiling.
She wondered where the spindlers had gotten them, and where the wires for the electricity ran to, and pictured some poor family Above whose bills were always too high at the end of the month, and the father who would yell at the children about where all that power went - when really, of course, it was the spindlers that were the whole problem.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“Who taught you to go around falling on rats ans squishing on hats? Terrible, terrible. Must always be mindful of your manners.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“Prodigies! Geniuses! Artists! The lumer-lumpen are some of the most sensitive, the most brilliant, the wisest creatures on the earth or inside of it. There is more wisdom in the head of a lumpen than you will find in all the libraries of the world...If only they could speak...”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“For a moment the mole let his disappointment show on his snout. Then he grunted, "You're much smarter than you smell." Liza let out a whoop of satisfaction and chose not to worry too much about what stupidity smelled like.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“Everyone knows that only wishes that are kept secret will ever come true.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from The Spindlers
“I don't want to ruin our friendship and what we have but I cannot for another minute stand in front of you without you knowing exactly how I feel. Because I can't see past you. You are everything to me.”
― Elizabeth Eulberg, quote from Take a Bow
“It's strange how different we all appear to who we really are.”
― Sarah Pinborough, quote from Behind Her Eyes
“Because a shadow was a thing that defined itself, and Nettie didn't have to fit anyone else's shape.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“A butterfly flutters its wings in Malaysia and the changes in air currents cause a hurricane in Florida. I love that idea. That even one tiny action can create an enormous effect.”
― Emma Scott, quote from The Butterfly Project
“He caught a glimpse of that extraordinary faculty in man, that strange, altruistic, rare, and obstinate decency which will make writers or scientists maintain their truths at the risk of death. Eppur si muove, Galileo was to say; it moves all the same. They were to be in a position to burn him if he would go on with it, with his preposterous nonsense about the earth moving round the sun, but he was to continue with the sublime assertion because there was something which he valued more than himself. The Truth. To recognize and to acknowledge What Is. That was the thing which man could do, which his English could do, his beloved, his sleeping, his now defenceless English. They might be stupid, ferocious, unpolitical, almost hopeless. But here and there, oh so seldome, oh so rare, oh so glorious, there were those all the same who would face the rack, the executioner, and even utter extinction, in the cause of something greater than themselves. Truth, that strange thing, the jest of Pilate's. Many stupid young men had thought they were dying for it, and many would continue to die for it, perhaps for a thousand years. They did not have to be right about their truth, as Galileo was to be. It was enough that they, the few and martyred, should establish a greatness, a thing above the sum of all they ignorantly had.”
― T.H. White, quote from The Book of Merlyn
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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