“Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're special and that we're still here.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“Memories no matter how small or inconsequential are the pages that define us.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“And he uncovered in us a curious need: that we each secretly wanted him to remember us the most. It was strange, both vital and flawed, until I realised that maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“Things happen. To everyone. No one escapes.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“Truth, as he always said, was overrated, nobody ever won prizes for telling the truth.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“You see, that's who you are, Joe. All these things. That's the person I know, and through him is the way you'll know me, because connected to all these things are moments, and for so many of them, I was there. And that's the thing that hurts so much...
You see, you were the only person who knew everything. Because you were there. You were my witness. And you make sense of the fucked-up mess I become every now and then. And I could at least look at you and think, at least he knows why I am the way I am. There were reasons. But I can't do that anymore and I feel so lonely.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“I am here but I am not yours.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“The first thing we need to find,' said Mr Golan, 'is a reason to live'.
...
'Without a reason, why bother? Existence needs purpose: to be able to endure the pain of life with dignity; to give us a reason to continue. The meaning must enter our hearts, not out heads. We must understand the meaning of our suffering.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“You had to translate his actions, for they were seldom accompanied by words, because his world was a quiet world; a disconnected, factured space; a puzzle that made him phone me at 3am, asking me for the last piece of the border, so he could fill in the sky.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“I divide my life into two parts. Not really a Before and After, more as if they are bookends, holding together flaccid years of empty musings, years of late adolescent or the twentysomething whose coat of adulthood simply does not fit.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“No amount of self-sufficiency could dispel the craving he still felt for that person we no longer talked about; that person who'd taken him apart and left a piece missing that none of us could find.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“We were solitary and apart. Slept during the day, uncurled at dusk like evening primroses; fragrant and lush. We never wanted to conquer the world, only our fears. We didn't keep in touch. Somewhere, though, our memories had.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“Nothing stays forgotten for long, Elly. Sometimes we simply have to remind the world that we're still here.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“Everyone had a story of grief. Everyone else's was worse than yours.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“I wondered if all women did with other women was lie and hug.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“I walked out and breathed fresh air. I felt the sun on my skin. The world is a different place when you are well, when you are young. The world is beautiful and safe. I said hello to the gatekeeper. He said hello back to me.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“And from that moment, I watched her. Watched her with different coloured eyes, until the raging energy that coursed through my body finally revealed itself and gave itself a name: envy. For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced itself with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear, a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice, and it was a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“You said I could be anything I wanted when I was older', I said.
She smiled and said, 'And you can be. But it's not very easy to become Jewish.'
'I know,' I said forlornly, 'I need a number.'
And she suddenly stopped smiling.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“And my father went back into the forest and chopped down a tree. The sound of the trunk fracturing and splintering and falling to earth was the sound his heart would have made, could it speak.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“I just want my friend back, I have become forgettable”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“I thought that probably I was worth more when I was younger.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“<...> maybe the need to be remembered is stronger than the need to remember.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“Shut up, Arthur,' said my mother, and he zipped his mouth shut like an infuriating child.
Ginger started to laugh. Not at anything in particular, but just because Ginger was stoned.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“It was left to Nancy and me to pick up the pieces that my brother had become; to resurrect his shrunken spirit and pull his pale tear-stained face from beneath his pillow and give sense to a world that had given him none; he loved, yet he wasn't loved back.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“It was the final chapter of his breakdown, the moment when his glass drained of everything, and its emptiness awaited only for choices to come.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“I was used to waiting for her. As a child I'd waited for hel all the time, but it never annoyed me because I didn't have the one thing that unfailingly stole hours from her life. 'Sorry I'm late' she used to say. 'It was my hair again. And she spoke of it as if it was an affliction like asthma or a limp or a problem heart, one that slowed her down”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“He started to do that, started to inform me of everything; the inconsequential, the meaningful; conversations that ended in a cul-de-sac of unanswerable rhetoric. i think it was because I knew everything about him, had read it all - the beautiful, the sordid, the all of his book. I had been his editor for 5 years, and now it seemed, had become his editor away from the printed page.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
“Emotions embarassed her except when she sang. My dad said that was exactly why she sang.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from When God Was a Rabbit
Sarah Winman
Born place: The United Kingdom
See more on GoodReads
“My return seemed to inspire and energize the neighborhood, as though it was evidence that the hard luck of life did not have to rule you. Sometimes miracles do happen.”
― quote from A Long Way Home
“Turkish Delight
Turkish delight has had a bad reputation since that man C.S.Lewis - a positive genius in other ways - linked it for ever with one of the most terrifying creations in literature, the White Witch of Narnia, and that naughty, sticky, traitorous Edmund. But with the sensuous pleasure imbued in its melting, gelatinous texture, and, when made in the proper way, delicately perfumed with rose petals, flavoured with oils and dusted with sugar, it reclaims its power as a sweet as seductive as Arabian nights. The fact that it now carries with it a whiff of danger merely adds to its pleasure. It is not, truly, a sweet for children. They simply complain, and get the almonds stuck up their noses,”
― Jenny Colgan, quote from Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
“Perfect! You guys are the same age. I bet you have a lot in common.”
Classic adult logic. Reid and I are vaguely the same age, so of course we’re basically soul mates. It’s like horoscopes. Somehow I’m supposed to believe that I’m similar in some meaningful way to every single person born on my birthday. Or every single Sagittarius. I mean, I barely have anything in common with Cassie, and we were born six minutes apart.”
― Becky Albertalli, quote from The Upside of Unrequited
“I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty five days a year, I was still in elementary school at the time - fifth or sixth grade - but I made up my mind once and for all.”
“Wow,” I said. “Did the search pay off?”
“That’s the hard part,” said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. “I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.”
“Waiting for the perfect love?”
“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”
“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.
“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are time in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”
“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”
“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. “Now I see, Midori. What a fool I have been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate Mousse? Cheesecake?”
“So then what?”
“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”
“Sounds crazy to me.”
“Well, to me, that’s what love is…”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norvegų giria
“There was no point in tears outliving eyes, so she let them fall.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from A Year of Marvellous Ways
I Am the Messenger
Reflected in You
Specials
The Awakening
Howl and Other Poems
CrankBookQuoters 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.
