- “I don't know why one slight set of impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than another, though I believe this obtains with most people, in reference especially to the associations of their childhood. I never hear the name, nor read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em'ly leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing us the ships, like their own shadows.”
- “He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had asked the question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I believe my baby heart would have burst before I would have told him so.”
- “"Oh, no, we don't," said Anne, shaking her head gravely. "We are getting very, very wise, and it is such a pity. We are never half so interesting when we have learned that language is given us to enable us to conceal our thoughts."'
- “But when Anne went to bed Sunday night the east wind was moaning around Green Gables with an ominous prophecy which was fulfilled in the morning. Anne awoke to find raindrops pattering against her window and shadowing the pond's grey surface with widening rings; hills and sea were hidden in mist, and the whole world seemed dim and dreary. Anne dressed in the cheerless grey dawn, for an early start was necessary to catch the boat train; she struggled against the tears that would well up in her eyes in spite of herself. She was leaving the home that was so dear to her, and something told her that she was leaving it forever, save as a holiday refuge. Things would never be the same again; coming back for vacations would not be living there. And oh, how dear and beloved everything was - that little white porch room, sacred to the dreams of girlhood, the old Snow Queen at the window, the brook in the hollow, the Dryad's Bubble, the Haunted Wood, and Lover's Lane - all the thousand and one dear spots where memories of the old years bided. Could she ever be really happy anywhere else?”
- “"It has been a prosy day for us," she said thoughtfully, "but to some people it has been a wonderful day. Some one has been rapturously happy in it. Perhaps a great deed has been done somewhere today - or a great poem written - or a great man born. And some heart has been broken, Phil."”
- “"Just think of all of the great and noble souls who have lived and worked in the world," said Anne dreamily. "Isn't it worthwhile to come after them and inherit what they won and taught? And think of all the great people in the world today! Isn't it worthwhile to think we can share our inspiration? And then, all the great souls that will come in the future? Isn't it worthwhile to work a little and prepare the way for them - make just one step in their path easier?"”
- “We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement.”
- “"I hope no great sorrow ever will come to you, Anne," said Gilbert, who could not connect the idea of sorrow with the vivid, joyous creature beside him, unwitting that those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths, and that the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.”
- “Camping places fix themselves in your mind as if you had spent long periods of your life in them. You will remember a curve of your wagon track in the grass of the plain, like the features of a friend.”
- “Here on the plain he looked extraordinarily small, so that it struck you as a strange thing that so much suffering could be condensed into a single point.”
- “All this was in the grand manner, and recalled the declaration of faith of Prometheus: "Pain is my element as hate is thine. Ye rend me now: I care not." And, "Ay, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent." But in a person of his size it was uncomfortable, a thing to make you lose heart. And what will God think - I thought - confronted with this attitude in a small human being?”
- “It made me take another view of our civilisation; after all it might be in some way divine and predestined. I felt like the man who regained his faith in God because a phrenologist showed him the seat in the human brain of theological eloquence: if the existence of theological eloquence could be proved, the existence of theology itself was proved with it, and, in the end, God's existence.'
- “People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day knows not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of. Strangers appear and are friends or enemies, although the person who dreams has never done anything about them. The idea of flights and pursuit are recurrent in dreams and are equally enrapturing. Excellent witty things are said by everybody. It is true that if remembered in daytime they will fade and lose their sense, because they belong to a different plane, but as soon as the one who dreams lies down at night, the current is again closed and he remembers their excellence. All the time the feeling of immense freedom is surrounding him and running through him like air and light, an unearthly bliss. He is a privileged person, the one who has got nothing to do, but for whose enrichment and pleasure all things are brought together; the Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts. He takes part in a great battle or ball, and wonders the while that he should be, in the midst of those events, so far privileged as to be lying down. It is when one begins to lose the consciousness of freedom, and when the idea of necessity enters the world at all, when there is any hurry or strain anywhere, a letter to be written or a train to catch, when you have got to work, to make the horses of the dream gallop, or to make the rifles go off, that the dream is declining, and turning into the nightmare, which belongs to the poorest and most vulgar class of dreams. The thing which in the waking world comes nearest to a dream is night in a big town, where nobody knows one, or the African night. There too is infinite freedom: it is there that things are going on, destinies are made round you, there is activity on all sides, and it is none of your concern.”
- “For a moment Anne’s heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert’s gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps… perhaps…love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.”
- “It's hard not to like a man who not only notices the colours, but speaks them.”
- “It's a lot easier, she realised, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it.”
- “But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgement of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?”
- “No wonder I read. In books I found explicitly, flamboyantly, everything censored in life.”
- “There is nothing to match the affinity of people who were defined and nourished by the same book, who shared a fantasy life.”
- “Life happens alongside the act of reading - a story is forever mixed with where we were and what we were doing while we were reading that book. To see someone else reading that book is to know that you share a sort of intimate experience.”
- “Influential books are often a disappointment, if they’re properly influential, because influence cannot guarantee the quality of the imitators, and your appetite for the original has been partially sated by its poor copies.”
- “Perhaps no single novel can capture the variety of our lives…perhaps we need to read a lot.”
- “But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it.”
- “You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
- “I felt stung and bored and sober. I had that homesick feeling that I remembered from sleepovers: waking up in the night and wanting your mother more than anything – far, far more than you wanted to be that kid who doesn't make their parent come and get them in the middle of the night.”
- “I told her about the best and the worst. The slow and sleepy places where weekdays rolled past like weekends and Mondays didn't matter. Battered shacks perched on cliffs overlooking the endless, rumpled sea. Afternoons spent waiting on the docks, swinging my legs off a pier until the boats rolled in with crates full of oysters and crayfish still gasping. Pulling fishhooks out of my feet because I never wore shoes, playing with other kids whose names I never knew. Those were the unforgettable summers. There were outback towns were you couldn't see the roads for red dust, grids of streets with wandering dogs and children who ran wild and swam naked in creeks. I remembered climbing ancient trees that had a heartbeat if you pressed your ear to them. Boomboom-boomboom. Dreamy nights sleeping by the fire and waking up covered in fine ash, as if I'd slept through a nuclear holocaust. We were wanderers, always with our faces to the sun.”
- “Growing up is made up of a million small moments in time, and one of the most painful is when you're severed from the whole, when you realise that your parent is complicated and fallible and human.”
- “I thought about loneliness. How it's not something you catch and mostly we choose it. How a trouble shared is a trouble halved but things like love and joy are multiplied when you have someone to share them with. On the streets below there were hundreds of people – thousands, maybe – going about their business without touching, speaking, or acknowledging each other's existence.”
- “I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.”
- “Sorrow came - a gentle sorrow - but not at all in the shape of any disagreeable consciousness.”
- “The universe, I realize, is full of little torches. Sometimes, for some reason, it's your turn to carry one out of the fire - because the world needed it, or your family needed it, or you needed it to keep your soul from twisting into a shape that's entirely wrong.”
- “I buckle over, sobbing, my head resting against the hard shower tiles. I remember crying like this when Sukey died, the tears harsh, devouring, total. I hadn't known I was capable of being so sad, and the discovery shocked and terrified me. It was like finding an extra door in the house I'd always lived in, and opening it to find that the grief had carved out new rooms, new hallways, an entire black annex of its own. There were dark places in my mind I'd never known existed, and now that I'd seen them I knew they'd always be there, lying in wait, even when the original door had been sealed up.”
- “On the water, I can see Sukey’s ships, dark cities of their own. They are objects I will never touch, places I will never stand, sleeping giants that would not be disturbed even if all the shimmering lights and pretty buildings on land crumbled and fell down. Maybe we all need ships to hold our dreams, to be bigger and steadier than we ever could be, and to guard the mystery when we cannot, to keep it safe even when we have lost everything.”
- “People are like cities: We all have alleys and gardens and secret rooftops and places where daisies sprout between the sidewalk cracks, but most of the time all we let each other see is is a postcard glimpse of a skyline or a polished square. Love lets you find those hidden places in another person, even the ones they didn't know were there, even the ones they wouldn't have thought to call beautiful themselves.”
- “There are no mistakes, I realize - just detours whose significance only become clear when you see the whole picture at once.”
- “If you ever get that free, you need to reel yourself in, because the edges of the world are as sharp as glass, and if you ride over them you're going to get torn up.”
- “It's amazing how quickly the things you thought would make you happy seem small once you stumble on something true.”
- “How amazing it is to find someone who wants to hear about all the things that go on in your head.”
- “Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.”
- “I feel about you the way they feel in those books. The way those guys feel about those girls that they don’t always deserve.”
- “I like to fancy souls as being made out of light. And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers…and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea…and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn.”
- “Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn’t know before you learned it.” -- Maya Angelou
- “The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.” -- To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
- "My vision tilts, perspective shifting like everything I see is now one degree different - finally clicked into place. Like an opera singer onstage who believes she is the performer, only to find the orchestra - its earnestness, its unexpected soul - nearly moving her to tears. You mean to give, and find yourself taking and taking, soaking it in." -- When We Collided, Emery Lord
- "I know this feeling. I also know that emotions come from the brain. So why do people feel real aches in their chests? Why does it feel like we carry every feeling in our cores?" -- When We Collided, Emery Lord
- "Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon." -- Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty
- "Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could." -- Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
- "No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself." -- Virginia Woolf
- "Today I'm lying low and not saying a word. ... Stillness. One of the doors into the temple." -- Mary Oliver
- So this is how you swim inward. So this is how you flow outwards. So this is how you pray. Mary Oliver
sep 26 2012 ∞
nov 24 2017 +