“Their story isn't a fairytale, but that's okay, because fairytales are predictible, and sometimes boring.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“Something remarkable can always be the result of something devastating, if you choose to find that one positive in a nest of negatives.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I want to live as much as I can,and if people are around when I happen to get spontaneous, I can't exactly tell them to go away. I can't be like, clear out the grocery store! I feel the impulse to dance.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I think I would have missed you even if we'd never met.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“We always think we have more time and that is the wrong way to think, because time is something we never have enough of.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I'd rather be weird than a clone of everyone else.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“And isn't it weird that no one wants to change who they are, yet they aren't even trying to be themselves? Just a thought. We're all so focused on being somebody, and it's usually never the real us.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“The bigger the star, the quicker it dies.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“Don't blameme in the morning when you're irrevocably obsessed with me."
"I don't think I need to wait until morning for that to happen,”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“But what scares me the most about him is that he makes me want more—more of everything. More than this life, more than what I am promised, more than I can ever truly have.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“It's never about how much you have-it's about how much what you have means to you.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I realize that sometimes we are our biggest critic, and that the person we have the hardest time gaining approval from is usually ourselves.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“Peanut butter is my favorite food.”
Rivers looks at me for a long time, finally shaking his head. He moves to my side, reclining next tome. “Peanut butter is not food.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don't know. A condiment. Like ketchup or mustard.”
“Really, Rivers? Do you put peanut butter on a hamburger?”
“Do you eat it plain?” he shoots back.
“Yes.”
“Okay, do most people eat it plain?”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“going to make the time we have together unforgettable. I'm going to fuse you to me, so that there is no way of knowing where the separation between you and me begins—or even if there is one. I'm going to fill this summer with us, so that when you look back on it, all you remember is me, and when I look back on it, all I remember is you. I'm going to put as much life into now as I can. Like you did for me. Now it's my turn.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“Have you ever felt like you were searching for something, only you didn't know what it was until you found it?”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“It is true that no one can save you, no one but yourself. And sometimes...even you cannot save you, no matter how much you wish it was untrue. Sadly, some things are not meant to be saved.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I embrace me, exactly as I am, and the rest of the world can screw off.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I know my worth and the only person I need to prove anything to is myself. I like to dance. I like to sing. I like to talk to birds and squirrels. And I don't care who sees it. I'm not saying I never cared, because when I was younger, yes, I cared. I cared too much and I was hurt because of it, but not anymore. In recent years, I embrace me, exactly as I am, and the rest of the world can screw off.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I may keep my distance from others, but I am in no way shy. I keep my distance because I've found that I am a better person when I have no one looking at me, making me feel like I need to prove something to them, like I need to show them I have worth. I know my worth and the only person I need to prove anything to is myself.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“Funny how we all finally decide to start living only when we irrevocably know we are dying.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“You're saying one day I'll be a butterfly,” he says skeptically. I look up. “I'm saying you've always been one.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I don't think there is a question as to whether or not I want you, because that is painfully blatant right now, but did I miss you? It was so much more than that. And do I need you? Yes. I need you. My heart needs you, Delilah.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“even in a world of pain and ugliness, cruelty and loss, there are still amazing things to cling to, to tell us not to give up, not to lose hope, and continue on to another day. There is life in death, always.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I'm not saying I never cared, because when I was younger, yes, I cared. I cared too much and I was hurt because of it, but not anymore. In recent years, I embrace me, exactly as I am,”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I'm deformed I can barely walk. I'm ugly to look at. What am I supposed to do with the rest of my life? Sit at some desk job and talk to people over a phone?"
I jump to my feet and begin to clean off the table.
"I'm not done," he tells me.
"I think you need to go practice for your future career as a nobody. Go sit in your room and hold a phone in your hand or something.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“You know the saying that nothing can last forever? It's partly true. Feelings can stop, people can leave us, but regardless, a piece of them is always with us, in some way. Maybe it's in a song, or a forgotten note, a picture. Even when you no longer love someone or can't be with them, you still remember them, you still remember good parts of them, and you smile. “Why worry about it lasting or not? Even if it doesn't, you'll still have a part of him. And he'll still have a part of you. And isn't that what's really important? Holding the best pieces of someone in our hearts so that the love never really fades, so that we don't forget that we once knew them, and they were special to us.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I don't think you ever realized how unimportant high school and your role in it really was. High school is what happens before your life begins. You can be the top dog in that big brown building and a nobody outside it.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“I mean, I guess I don't really have you, but I feel like I do. I feel like when you smile at me...my whole body feels it. I've never felt so much so soon for anyone. I don't want to lose this feeling. You woke my soul up and the rest of me followed.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“Your obvious need forattention and melodramatic acting sort of trumped my disfigurement.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“His body heat seeps into my side, as does his sweet smell that makes me homesick for a home I've never had.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star
“Maybe you could heal her? You're the one who loves her."
"I don't know how to heal."
"What you mean is you're too afraid to try."
His face turns thoughtful. "Yes, that's exactly what I mean.”
― Rae Carson, quote from The Bitter Kingdom
“A poet, Hephaestion, sings not to narrate human events as they occur, but to make sure that we have the opportunity of living the emotions and the passions of our heroes even at a distance of centuries.”
― Valerio Massimo Manfredi, quote from Alexander: Child of a Dream
“Oh, I’m so going to put a knife in the other side of your chest, I think, feeling stabby.”
― Amy A. Bartol, quote from Sea of Stars
“I don't care if my love is requited or not, because being with you and the very thought of you makes me happy. The point I'm trying to make is that you are loved because I love you, Adam. Please, don't do it. Please, don't jump because I need you.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from How to Fall in Love
“Like any overt school of mysticism, a movement seeking to achieve a vicious goal has to invoke the higher mysteries of an incomprehensible authority. An unread and unreadable book serves this purpose. It does not count on men’s intelligence, but on their weaknesses, pretensions and fears. It is not a tool of enlightenment, but of intellectual intimidation. It is not aimed at the reader’s understanding, but at his inferiority complex.
An intelligent man will reject such a book with contemptuous indignation, refusing to waste his time on untangling what he perceives to be gibberish—which is part of the book’s technique: the man able to refute its arguments will not (unless he has the endurance of an elephant and the patience of a martyr). A young man of average intelligence—particularly a student of philosophy or of political science—under a barrage of authoritative pronouncements acclaiming the book as “scholarly,” “significant,” “profound,” will take the blame for his failure to understand. More often than not, he will assume that the book’s theory has been scientifically proved and that he alone is unable to grasp it; anxious, above all, to hide his inability, he will profess agreement, and the less his understanding, the louder his agreement—while the rest of the class are going through the same mental process. Most of them will accept the book’s doctrine, reluctantly and uneasily, and lose their intellectual integrity, condemning themselves to a chronic fog of approximation, uncertainty, self doubt. Some will give up the intellect (particularly philosophy) and turn belligerently into “pragmatic,” anti-intellectual Babbitts. A few will see through the game and scramble eagerly for the driver’s seat on the bandwagon, grasping the possibilities of a road to the mentally unearned.
Within a few years of the book’s publication, commentators will begin to fill libraries with works analyzing, “clarifying” and interpreting its mysteries. Their notions will spread all over the academic map, ranging from the appeasers, who will try to soften the book’s meaning—to the glamorizers, who will ascribe to it nothing worse than their own pet inanities—to the compromisers, who will try to reconcile its theory with its exact opposite—to the avant-garde, who will spell out and demand the acceptance of its logical consequences. The contradictory, antithetical nature of such interpretations will be ascribed to the book’s profundity—particularly by those who function on the motto: “If I don’t understand it, it’s deep.” The students will believe that the professors know the proof of the book’s theory, the professors will believe that the commentators know it, the commentators will believe that the author knows it—and the author will be alone to know that no proof exists and that none was offered.
Within a generation, the number of commentaries will have grown to such proportions that the original book will be accepted as a subject of philosophical specialization, requiring a lifetime of study—and any refutation of the book’s theory will be ignored or rejected, if unaccompanied by a full discussion of the theories of all the commentators, a task which no one will be able to undertake.
This is the process by which Kant and Hegel acquired their dominance. Many professors of philosophy today have no idea of what Kant actually said. And no one has ever read Hegel (even though many have looked at every word on his every page).”
― Ayn Rand, quote from Philosophy: Who Needs It
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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