“Have you ever given someone a book you enjoyed enormously, with a feeling of envy because they were about to read it for the first time, an experience you could never have again?”
― Jack Finney, quote from Time and Again
“So all in all there wasn't anything really wrong with my life. Except that, like most everyone else's I knew about, it had a big gaping hole in it, an enormous emptiness, and I didn't know how to fill it or even know what belonged there.”
― Jack Finney, quote from Time and Again
“It may be that the strongest instinct of the human race, stronger than sex or hunger, is curiosity: the absolute need to know. It can and often does motivate a lifetime, it kills more than cats, and the prospect of satisfying it can be the most exciting of emotions.”
― Jack Finney, quote from Time and Again
“As Einstein himself pointed out. He said we’re like people in a boat without oars drifting along a winding river. Around us we see only the present. We can’t see the past, back in the bends and curves behind us. But it’s there.”
― Jack Finney, quote from Time and Again
“Would you have references?"
"I'm awfully sorry but I haven't. I just arrived in New York, and don't know a soul. Except you." I smiled but she didn't smile back. She stood hesitating, and I said, "It's true that I'm an escaped convict, an active counterfeiter, and occasional murderer. And I howl during the full of the moon. But I'm neat.”
― Jack Finney, quote from Time and Again
“He's got to have the ability, and it seems to be fairly rare, to see things as they are and at the same time as they might have been. What we mean is the eye of an artist.”
― Jack Finney, quote from Time and Again
“Set flush in the wall behind the desk was a steel door. It was knobless, and along one edge were three brass keyholes spaced a few inches apart. Rube brought out a key ring, selected a key, then walked around the desk, inserted the key in the topmost lock, and turned it. From his watch pocket he took a single key, pushed it into the middle keyhole, and turned. The guard stood waiting beside him, and now the guard inserted a key in the bottom keyhole, turned it and pulled the door open with the key. Rube removed his two keys and gestured me in through the open door before him. He followed, and the door swung solidly shut behind us. I heard the multiple click of the locks engaging, and we were standing in a space hardly larger than a big closet, dimly lighted by an overhead bulb in a wire cage. Then I saw that we were at the top of a circular metal staircase.”
― Jack Finney, quote from Time and Again
“and—we’re all actors by instinct, hams from birth—she”
― Jack Finney, quote from Time and Again
Jack Finney
Born place: in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, The United States
Born date October 2, 1911
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“I knew that I had reached the end of childhood once I realized that the adults in my life didn't know any more than I did - and then in a flash I knew that everything that had preceded that exact moment was a sort of game played by the so-called adults who winked at each other when you weren't looking...people who pretended to be things they were not, like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, athletic coaches, teachers, our heroes, too. But the sad truth was they they were no better than we were, and more often than not, they were much worse because they had been here on this planet longer than we had and therefore were able to collect more vices, worries, and sadness.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing
“literature instead of cleanliness was next to godliness.”
― Stephen King, quote from Finders Keepers
“He’s such a good boy.” Maybe. Louie had flirted around the edges of the drug scene throughout high school. There were plenty of red flags but his parents had always chosen to ignore them. At every sign of trouble, they had rushed in to defend him and believe his lies. They had enabled Louie, and now the bill was due.”
― John Grisham, quote from The Rooster Bar
“In the face of all reason she was interested in him as he was. Not as he wished he was.”
― C.S. Richardson, quote from The End of the Alphabet
“I think of my own life, how it embraces a great quest to know every cog of nature--the names of oaks and ferns, the secret lives of birds, the taste of venison and Ogeechee lime, wax myrtle's smell and rattlesnake's, the contour of bobcat tracks, the number of barred owl cackles, the feel of Okefenokee Swamp water on my skin under a blistering sun.
I search for a vital knowledge of the land that my father could not teach me, as he was not taught, and guidance to know and honor it, as he was not guided, as if this will shield me from the errancies of the mind, or bring me back from that dark territory should I happen to wander there. I search as if there were peace to be found.”
― Janisse Ray, quote from Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
Prey
Proven Guilty
Lords of the North
The Heart of the Mat...
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Taken by MidnightBookQuoters 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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