Gabrielle Zevin · 260 pages
Rating: (163.2K votes)
“Sometimes books don't find us until the right time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“The words you can’t find, you borrow.
We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
We are not quite novels.
The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.
In the end, we are collected works.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“We are not quite novels.
We are not quite short stories.
In the end, we are collected works.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us,” the passage goes, “but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“A place ain’t a place without a bookstore,”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you're the only person in the room.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“No Man Is An Island; Every Book Is A World.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“The words you can't find, you borrow.
We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That's basically the highest compliment I can give.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Most people's problems would be solved if they would only give more things a chance.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Bookstores attract the right kind of folk. Good people like A.J. and Amelia. And I like talking about books with people who like talking about books. I like paper. I like how it feels, and I like the feel of a book in my back pocket. I like how a new book smells, too.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“A question I've thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“The words you can't find, you borrow.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be—basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful—nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children's books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and—I imagine this goes without saying—vampires.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself.
No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Remember that a fine education can be found in places other than the usual.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Maya, we are what we love. We are that we love.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Do you like Moby Dick?" he asks.
"I hate it," she says. "And I don't say that about many things. Teachers assign it, and parents are happy because their kids are reading something of 'quality.' But it's forcing kids to read books like that that make them think they hate reading.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Who are these people who think a book comes with a guarantee that they will like it?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“When I read a book, I want you to be reading it at the same time. I want to know what would Amelia think of it. I want you to be mine. I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart, Amy.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“Love you,” Maya says. “Yes, she keeps saying that,” A.J. says. “I warned her about giving love that hasn’t yet been earned, but honestly, I think it’s the influence of that insidious Elmo. He loves everyone, you know?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“I've been a police officer for twenty years now and I'll tell you, pretty much every bad thing is life is a result of bad timing, and every good thing is the result of good timing.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
“He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it's love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother. It's completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Gabrielle Zevin
Born place: The United States
See more on GoodReads
“Life's like a penis; When it's soft you can't beat it; When it's hard you get screwed. - The Fat Man, Medical Resident in The House of God”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“You were sleeping?" said Princess One.
"No," I said. "Sometimes I just like to lie in the dark for hours with my eyes closed.”
― Melissa Kantor, quote from If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?
“Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth. What remains in the bum or studiedly jocular desperation of one who is aware of the obscene Presence in the corner of the room and knows that the door is locked, that there aren’t any windows. And now the thing bears down on him. He feels a hand on his sleeve, smells a stinking breath, as the executioner’s assistant leans almost amorously toward him. “Your turn next, brother. Kindly step this way.” And in an instant his quiet terror is transmuted into a frenzy as violent as it is futile. There is no longer a man among his fellow men, no longer a rational being speaking articulately to other rational beings; there is only a lacerated animal, screaming and struggling in the trap. For in the end fear casts out even a man’s humanity. And fear, my good friends, fear is the very basis and foundation of modern life. Fear of the much touted technology which, while it raises out standard of living, increases the probability of our violently dying. Fear of the science which takes away the one hand even more than what it so profusely gives with the other. Fear of the demonstrably fatal institutions for while, in our suicidal loyalty, we are ready to kill and die. Fear of the Great Men whom we have raised, and by popular acclaim, to a power which they use, inevitably, to murder and enslave us. Fear of the war we don’t want yet do everything we can to bring about.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Ape and Essence
“If I could have wished what I thought was my perfect mate on the wind and had her come back to me in a storm, I could never have come up with anything as exquisite as you.”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from With Everything I Am
“And that the love of a parent for a child is the most powerful force on earth.”
― Lucinda Riley, quote from The Seven Sisters
Second Chance Romanc...
All over You
Bound Together
The Mustard Seed: Th...
K2: Life and Death o...
Witches on ParoleBookQuoters 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.
