This is a compilation of well loved, much appreciated quotes I have highlighted from readings over the years. As the saying goes "One man's trash is another man's treasure", so while the quotes may mean squat to some, it means the world to me especially so when read in context of the story.
The quotes are listed in order of authors alphabetically, with said quote followed by book title and its author.
A handful of them are listed without source as I have somehow lost track of their origins along the way. Though some do ring a bell, I am not totally sure. And until I have total recall, I will leave them as it is because no source is better than incorrect source.
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Authors A Authors B
Authors C Authors D
Authors E Authors F
Authors G Authors H
Authors I Authors J
Authors K Authors L
Authors M Authors N
Authors O Authors P
Authors Q Authors R
Authors S Authors T
Authors U Authors V
Authors W Authors X
Authors Y Authors Z
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Authors A
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Love is for the living. The dead aren't capable of it, any more than sociopaths are capable of mercy or remorse. There's just a certain part of their brain that no longer works that way.
~ Touched
A. J. Aalto
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My elation blew away on a cold wind, the heat of the summer day gone.
~ Existence
Abbi Glines
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I love you but I am not in love with you and I never will be again.
I need to pack and I need to move on with my life.”
~ Never Too Far
Abbi Glines
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To think that you will be happy by becoming something else is delusion. Becoming something else just exchanges one form of suffering for another form of suffering. But when you are content with who you are now, junior or senior, married or single, rich or poor, then you are free of suffering.
~ Opening the Door of Your Heart: And other Buddhist Tales of Happiness
Ajahn Brahm
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If kindness is imagined as a beautiful dove, then wisdom is its wings. Compassion without wisdom never takes off.
~ Opening the Door of Your Heart: And other Buddhist Tales of Happiness
Ajahn Brahm
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The most difficult stage of the journey out of guilt is convincing ourselves that we deserve to be forgiven. The stories given so far are there to assist us, but the final step out of the prison is made alone.
~ Opening the Door of Your Heart: And other Buddhist Tales of Happiness
Ajahn Brahm
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All the book challenges, the real ones, were because one person saw a book in a very different way than somebody else. Which was fine. Everybody had the right to interpret any book any way they wanted to. What they couldn’t do then was tell everybody else their interpretation was the only interpretation.
~ Ban this Book
Alan Gratz
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Good books shouldn’t be hidden away. They should be read by as many people as many times as possible.
~ Ban this Book
Alan Gratz
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How do you explain to someone else why a thing matters to you if it doesn’t matter to them? How can you put into words how a book slips inside of you and becomes a part of you so much that your life feels empty without it?
~ Ban this Book
Alan Gratz
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He was silent so long I thought he'd caught a message from outer space or something.
~ Vacant
Alex Hughes
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An idea started to pick up its head from the back of my mind, but when I reached for it, it spooked and ran away. It would be back.
~ Marked
Alex Hughes
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Thoughts were such a rich medium, well beyond words, and for the first time I had cause to hate that fact.
~ Marked
Alex Hughes
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Yeah, I can read minds, but so what? I’ve read your mind and you’re still you and your secrets are still secret. I don’t know what’s going on, but whatever it is doesn’t change crap.
~ Sharp
Alex Hughes
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I am a telepath. The Guild has jurisdiction over me, over some things, and neither you nor me nor anybody else can change that without an act of Congress.
~ Sharp
Alex Hughes
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The dream wasn’t a dream; it smelled of truth before it began, truth of what could be, or would be, a vision of the future from the stupid stubborn precognition.
~ Sharp
Alex Hughes
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The rules of three. A bad attitude can kill you in three seconds; asphyxiation can kill you in three minutes; exposure in three hours; dehydration in three days; and starvation in three weeks—or is it three months?
~ The Last One
Alexandra Oliva
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It’s peculiar how no-words can be better than words. Silence can say more than noise, in the same way that a person’s absence can occupy even more space than their presence did.
~ The Thing about Jellyfish
Ali Benjamin
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Nothing had changed, and yet everything had.
~ The Thing about Jellyfish
Ali Benjamin
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The thing I did hangs suspended between us. It hovers there, silently, like an unfinished sentence.
~ The Thing about Jellyfish
Ali Benjamin
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I stared at the words so long that they started looking unfamiliar, like something written in an entirely different language.
~ The Thing about Jellyfish
Ali Benjamin
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Long streaks of sun crossed through the window, like spirits through walls. They lay down on the carpet and were still.
~ The Thing about Jellyfish
Ali Benjamin
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A person can become invisible simply by staying quiet.
I’d always thought that being seen was about what people perceived with their eyes.
Being seen is more about the ears than the eyes, it turns out.
~ The Thing about Jellyfish
Ali Benjamin
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This land was in my bones.
No matter what the crisis, I was part of this place, tasting it, living it, feeling it.
~ Nightwalker
Allyson James
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I heard about their unjust imprisonment and liberated them from an unappreciative source.
~ Nightchaser
Amanda Bouchet
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The artwork on the cover jumped right off the page, looking like something straight out of a fairy tale.
~ Nightchaser
Amanda Bouchet
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Sometimes things just are, and all that’s left to do is exist in spite of them.
~ The Women in the Walls
Amy Lukavics
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People can be happy and sad at the same time.. Sometimes the sad parts just spiral out of control.
~ The Women in the Walls
Amy Lukavics
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Mountains have the power to call us into their realms and there, left forever, are our friends whose great souls were longing for the heights. Do not forget the mountaineers who have not returned from the summits.
~ The Climb
Anatoli Boukreev
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Dead man’s hands slid down my spine, icy cold and full of whispers of darkness to come.
~ Shady Lady
Ann Aguirre
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‘This too shall pass.’
~ Shady Lady
Ann Aguirre
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The eyes were the windows to the soul.
~ Shady Lady
Ann Aguirre
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Crystal! The worst addiction in the galaxy: difficult to live with and impossible to live without.
~ Crystal Line
Anne McCaffrey
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Walk the paths of logic. Every outcome has its cause, and every predicament has its solution. Every lock its key.
~ All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
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.. sometimes you can spend so much time chasing something that you lose everything else while you're about it.
~ Magpie Murders
Anthony Horowitz
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.. everything in life had a pattern and that a coincidence was simply the moment when that pattern became briefly visible.
~ Magpie Murders
Anthony Horowitz
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..These had been his plans. But if there was one thing that life had taught him, it was the futility of making plans. Life had its own agenda.
~ Magpie Murders
Anthony Horowitz
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Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone.
Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was a central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be.
We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way.
~ Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande
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A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one’s story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone’s lives.
~ Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande
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In the end, people don’t view their life as merely the average of all of its moments — which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep.
For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens.
Measurements of people’s minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life may be empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.
Unlike your experiencing self — which is absorbed in the moment — your remembering self is attempting to recognize not only the peaks of joy and valleys of misery but also how the story works out as a whole. That is profoundly affected by how things ultimately turn out.
Why would a football fan let a few flubbed minutes at the end of the game ruin three hours of bliss? Because a football game is a story. And in stories, endings matter.
~ Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande
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At least two kinds of courage are required in aging and sickness.
The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality — the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped. Such courage is difficult enough. We have many reasons to shrink from it.
But even more daunting is the second kind of courage — the courage to act on the truth we find. The problem is that the wise course is so frequently unclear.
For a long while, I thought that this was simply because of uncertainty. When it is hard to know what will happen, it is hard to know what to do. But the challenge, I’ve come to see, is more fundamental than that.
One has to decide whether one’s fears or one’s hopes are what should matter most.
~ Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande
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Like many other people, I had believed that hospice care hastens death, because patients forgo hospital treatments and are allowed high-dose narcotics to combat pain.
But multiple studies find otherwise. In one, researchers followed 4,493 Medicare patients with either terminal cancer or end-stage congestive heart failure. For the patients with breast cancer, prostate cancer, or colon cancer, the researchers found no difference in survival time between those who went into hospice and those who didn’t.
And curiously, for some conditions, hospice care seemed to extend survival. Those with pancreatic cancer gained an average of three weeks, those with lung cancer gained six weeks, and those with congestive heart failure gained three months.
The lesson seems almost Zen: you live longer only when you stop trying to live longer.
~ Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande
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The terror of sickness and old age is not merely the terror of the losses one is forced to endure but also the terror of the isolation.
As people become aware of the finitude of their life, they do not ask for much. They do not seek more riches. They do not seek more power. They ask only to be permitted, insofar as possible, to keep shaping the story of their life in the world — to make choices and sustain connections to others according to their own priorities.
~ Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande
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..how we seek to spend our time may depend on how much time we perceive ourselves to have.
When you are young and healthy, you believe you will live forever. You do not worry about losing any of your capabilities. People tell you “the world is your oyster,” “the sky is the limit,” and so on. And you are willing to delay gratification — to invest years, for example, in gaining skills and resources for a brighter future. You seek to plug into bigger streams of knowledge and information. You widen your networks of friends and connections, instead of hanging out with your mother.
When horizons are measured in decades, which might as well be infinity to human beings, you most desire all that stuff at the top of Maslow’s pyramid — achievement, creativity, and other attributes of “self-actualization.”
But as your horizons contract — when you see the future ahead of you as finite and uncertain — your focus shifts to the here and now, to everyday pleasures and the people closest to you.
~ Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande
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Even our brains shrink: at the age of thirty, the brain is a three-pound organ that barely fits inside the skull; by our seventies, gray-matter loss leaves almost an inch of spare room. That’s why elderly people like my grandfather are so much more prone to cerebral bleeding after a blow to the head — the brain actually rattles around inside.
The earliest portions to shrink are generally the frontal lobes, which govern judgment and planning, and the hippocampus, where memory is organized. As a consequence, memory and the ability to gather and weigh multiple ideas — to multitask — peaks in midlife and then gradually declines.
Processing speeds start decreasing well before age forty (which may be why mathematicians and physicists commonly do their best work in their youth). By age eighty-five, working memory and judgment are sufficiently impaired that 40 percent of us have textbook dementia.
~ Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande
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Authors B
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“There is no lawn mower. The wolf is a creature of nature, the source of life and death. He calls upon the forest to heal itself. To send the floods to loosen the earth, the quakes to crack the roots, the wind to fell the trees, and the fire to clear the fallen trees.”
“The Elements.”
~ The Alchemist’s Flame
Becca Andre
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All winter I had felt like a steersman in a fog, tideswept to nowhere, windblown to no harbor, lost, but now it was as though the fog lifted. The Fates had shown me the landmark I had sought, and if it was not the landmark I had wished for, it still gave my ship direction.
~ The Burning Land
Bernard Cornwell
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The three spinners make our threads. Wyrd bið ful ãræd, we say, and it is true. Fate is inexorable.
~ The Burning Land
Bernard Cornwell
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Wyrd bið ful ãræd, it says. Fate is inexorable. And wyn eal gedreas. All the joy has died.
~ The Burning Land
Bernard Cornwell
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Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.
~ Sword Song
Bernard Cornwell
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Fate decrees what we do. We cannot escape fate. Wyrd bið ful āræd. We have no choices in life, how can we? Because from the moment we are born the three sisters know where our thread will go and what patterns it will weave and how it will end. Wyrd bið ful āræd.
~ Sword Song
Bernard Cornwell
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Fear hovers in the air like a cloud and we talk of nothing to pretend that the cloud is not there.
~ Sword Song
Bernard Cornwell
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Wyrd bi ful aræd, we say, and it is true. Fate is inexorable.
~ The Lords of the North
Bernard Cornwell
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At the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life, there are three spinners, three women who make our fate. We might believe we make choices, but in truth our lives are in the spinners’ fingers. They make our lives, and destiny is everything.
~ The Pale Horseman
Bernard Cornwell
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I found another uncle, this one called Ealdorman Æthelred, son of Æthelred, brother of Æthelwulf, father of Æthelred, and brother to another Æthelred who had been the father of Ælswith who was married to Alfred, and Ealdorman Æthelred, with his confusing family, grudgingly acknowledged me as a nephew.
~ The Last Kingdom
Bernard Cornwell
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I learned that life is so, so fragile.
I learned that you can know someone for just days and never forget the impression he left on you.
I learned that art can be beautiful and sad at the same time.
I learned that if someone loves you, he’ll wait for you to love him back.
I learned that how much you want something doesn’t determine whether you get it or not, that “no” might not be enough, that life isn’t fair, that my parents can’t save me, that maybe no one can.
~ Shades of Earth
Beth Revis
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Slow living is a curious mix of being prepared and being prepared to let go. Caring more and caring less. Saying yes and saying no. Being present and walking away. Doing the important things and forgetting those that aren't. Grounded and free. Heavy and light. Organised and flexible. Complex and simple.
~ Slow
Brooke McAlary
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Authors C
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Forgiveness is a kind of time travel, only better, because it sutures the wounds of the past with the wisdom of the present in the same moment as it promises a better future.
~ The Lighthouse Witches
C. J. Cooke
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We think that time moves forward, in a linear fashion. Yeah? But sometimes you get déjà vu, or there’s some mad coincidence that you can’t explain. I think time doesn’t move in a linear fashion, but in a spiral, and sometimes there’s echoes from the past. And a ghost is just an echo of someone.
~ The Lighthouse Witches
C. J. Cooke
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..truth and memory can be too complex, too tentacled, to boil down to a linear narrative. That sometimes, silence is a form of survival.
~ The Lighthouse Witches
C. J. Cooke
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Throughout those early years of nappies, teething, tantrums and night terrors I’d consoled myself by imagining a time when my girls were old enough to be self-sufficient. Maybe then I wouldn’t be pulled in three different directions, always spinning plates. But Saffy’s defiance had grown into disrespect and contempt. I felt as though I needed an emotional suit of armour to protect myself from her spiteful comments. She resented every thought, cell, breath, and ounce of me.
~ The Lighthouse Witches
C. J. Cooke
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Falling into the cycle of wanting more, consuming more, and needing even more won’t help. More was never the answer. The answer, it turned out, was always less.
~ The Year of Less
Cait Flanders
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..something I had learned time and time again was that every small change you make pays compound interest. It helps you make another change, another mind-set shift, another decision to live a new way.
~ The Year of Less
Cait Flanders
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..smaller cities naturally come with slower lifestyles, and are filled with communities of people who are grateful for all the little things life has to offer. I wanted to be surrounded by those who valued living over working, spending time outdoors over spending time online, and doing things for themselves over paying for every possible convenience.
~ The Year of Less
Cait Flanders
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I also didn’t want to work at a job where all I cared about was getting a promotion and a raise every year, and when you live in a big city, it can feel like that’s all there is to work toward. More work, more money, more stuff. I didn’t want any of it. And now, I didn’t need any of it. All I needed was to make enough money to live, save, and occasionally travel, and the shopping ban showed me exactly how much that would cost.
~ The Year of Less
Cait Flanders
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..I had also always been stuck in the consumerism cycle. I thought I needed to earn more money each year, so I could have more of what I wanted. That cycle meant I was constantly spending the extra money I was earning, rather than saving it, and I still wanted more on top of that. But the ban proved another theory: When you want less, you consume less—and you also need less money.
~ The Year of Less
Cait Flanders
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Advertisements and marketing campaigns had conditioned me to believe everything was now or never. It never occurred to me to wait until I actually needed something. The truth, I was learning, was that we couldn’t actually discover what we needed until we lived without it.
~ The Year of Less
Cait Flanders
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One lesson I’ve learned countless times over the years is that whenever you let go of something negative in your life, you make room for something positive.
~ The Year of Less
Cait Flanders
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Changing a habit and routine you’ve spent a decade perfecting is never easy.
~ The Year of Less
Cait Flanders
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...I said good-bye to the wasted money, wasted dreams, and wasted opportunities. Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe it was the beginning of saved money, saved dreams, and saved opportunities.
~ The Year of Less
Cait Flanders
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Good food without fitness or sleep won’t make you healthy. Working out every day but starving your body of nutrition and rest won’t make you strong. Sleeping eight hours a night but not eating well or moving enough isn’t going to keep you bright-eyed and alert. But if you do all these things consistently on a daily basis, you will be amazed at how your entire being responds.
~ The Longevity Book
Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bark
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Being physically active, eating nutritious foods, giving yourself time for rest, creating opportunities for learning, prioritizing stress relief, and embracing social connection are all essential for brain health as you age - as well as the health of your whole body.
~ The Longevity Book
Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bark
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Along the course of a healthy lifetime, your body is in a constant state of transformation, renewal, and rebirth at the most microscopic level. Your health begins with your cells. Every sign of aging you see and feel on the surface, every sag and wrinkle and ache and pain, begins in your cells. They are dynamic and responsive to your environment, to your stress levels, to your nutrition, and to the prompts of your hormones and the expression of your genes. Cells are born, they fulfill their destinies, and then they die, so that you can continue to live and grow older.
~ The Longevity Book
Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bark
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For an individual, biological age (how healthy you are on the inside) is a more important indicator of health than chronological age (the number of years you've been on this planet). The aging of our cells is the true measure of how old we are.
~ The Longevity Book
Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bark
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..aging isn't just about your face (or your neck, or your upper arms, or your hands, or ...). It's about your whole body. And how you take care of your whole body will affect each and every one of your parts, inside and out.
~ The Longevity Book
Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bark
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That moment when you thought you looked "old", when you were twenty-five or maybe thirty-five, is the same moment you are experiencing right now, when you are both the oldest you have ever been and the youngest you will ever be.
~ The Longevity Book
Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bark
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Beauty appreciates, not depreciates. It grows, not fades. With age, I have developed a more nuanced understanding of what beauty really is. Beauty is not just something you are born with. Beauty is something you grow into.
~ The Longevity Book
Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bark
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Appreciating all the ways we can evolve over the years - the self-knowledge we develop, the skills and wisdom we accumulate, the relationships we build with others and with ourselves - these are the privileges of time.
~ The Longevity Book
Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bark
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Eating good food, developing our muscles, getting a good night's sleep, loving other people, laughing, relaxing, finding joy in the world. These are the actions and activities that make us interesting people, curious people, strong people.
The best way to age well isn't to worry about aging. It is to live well.
~ The Longevity Book
Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bark
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Grief has its fingers about my throat and I can barely breathe.
~ The Mermaid’s Sister
Carrie Anne Noble
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..beauty was an illusory "power" dependent on physical characteristics that weren't permanent and said nothing about a person's worth or character.
~ Undercity
Catherine Asaro
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'Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead,' said Scrooge. 'But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!'
~ A Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens
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Your greatest investment in your kids and the next generation isn't your money; it's passing down who you are and making an investment in who they are becoming. That's what really lasts generationally.
~ Retire Inspired
Chris Hogan
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..the thing to remember as parents and as grandparents is that the greatest expression of true love is actually time and attention - not cash and prizes.
~ Retire Inspired
Chris Hogan
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Boundaries clarify what is important to me and my wife, show me what I am willing to do and how far I am willing to go to accomplish my dreams, and define what I'll do to protect the dreams we've agreed to. Boundaries aren't about saying no to everything; boundaries are about saying yes to what really matters - whether or not your family and friends understand or agree.
~ Retire Inspired
Chris Hogan
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There is no such thing as getting rich quick. There is no magic formula for building wealth overnight. You know what the secret ingredient is for wealth building? Patience. Fear, anxiety and impulsiveness are the enemies of patience, and they'll all lead you into retirement broke. Don't let them! Keep your eyes on the goal and keep moving toward your dream - slow and steady.
~ Retire Inspired
Chris Hogan
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The truth is, there is more to debt than basic math. The really terrifying downside to debt is risk. In addition to borrowing from your dreams, debt places you at risk. No matter what is happening in your life, no matter what life deals you, that debt will always demand a payment each month.
~ Retire Inspired
Chris Hogan
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.. this journey toward your dream, your retirement, is completely up to you. You cannot depend on winning the lottery. You cannot depend on the government. You cannot depend on your children. You shouldn't depend on some big inheritance from a parent or distant relative. It is 100 percent in your hands.
~ Retire Inspired
Chris Hogan
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Retirement is not the end of your life; it's the start of what could be the last third of your life. If you're going to live a few decades without working, your only income then depends on what you are doing now.
~ Retire Inspired
Chris Hogan
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...when a person comes to a place where he or she is reduced to nothing, that’s when we begin to understand the value of all things.
~ To Hell and Back: The Last Train from Hiroshima
Charles Pellegrino
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All of our lives are just a series of events carefully orchestrated to culminate in whatever death fate has planned for us. Every moment. Every act. Every loving whisper and hateful gesture - all just another tiny cog in the clockwork ready to ring the alarm for our ultimate hour.
~ Blackbirds
Chuck Wendig
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My eyes begin to shut heavily -- once, twice, then a third time.
I open them one last time as I try to search for light, but I know I'll never find it,
because there is no light in darkness.
~ There is No Light in Datkness
Claire Contreras
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No matter what you go through in life, don’t be afraid to love.
Loving is the only thing that keeps us sane.
If it weren’t for love, the suffering we experience wouldn’t be worth it.
If it weren’t for the suffering, we wouldn’t cherish the good things life gives us.
Sometimes it’ll seem as though life only knocks you down, but you have to learn to pick yourself up and fight back.
~ There is No Light in Datkness
Claire Contreras
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In the end, he hurt me more than I hurt him.
I broke his heart, but he tore mine into a million pieces.
Even if I wanted to piece it back together, I would never find them all because he would always be holding some.
~ There is No Light in Datkness
Claire Contreras
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Authors D
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If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.
~ Rebecca
Daphne Du Maurier
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First Sean looked annoyed, then horrified, then scared, then . . . I had no idea what he was feeling. His expression changed in slow motion.
~ A Simple Favor
Darcey Bell
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The departed exist on one plane, and the human race exists on another, and somehow - whether by freak accident, divine intervention, or psychological disorder - I exist on both.
~ First Grave On the Right
Darynda Jones
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Character is not something you build sitting in a room thinking about the difference between right and wrong and about your own willpower. Character emerges from our commitments. If you want to inculcate character in someone else, teach them how to form commitments — temporary ones in childhood, provisional ones in youth, permanent ones in adulthood. Commitments are the school for moral formation.
When your life is defined by fervent commitments, you are on the second mountain.
~ The Second Mountain
David Brooks
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The valley is where we shed the old self so the new self can emerge. There are no shortcuts. There’s just the same eternal three-step process that the poets have described from time eternal: from suffering to wisdom to service. Dying to the old self, cleansing in the emptiness, resurrecting in the new. From the agony of the valley, to the purgation in the desert, to the insight on the mountaintop.
~ The Second Mountain
David Brooks
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Seasons of pain expose the falseness and vanity of most of our ambitions and illuminate the larger reality of living and dying, caring and being cared for. Pain helps us see the true size of our egotistical desires. Before they seemed gigantic and dominated the whole screen. After seasons of suffering, we see that the desires of the ego are very small desires, and certainly not the ones we should organize our lives around.
~ The Second Mountain
David Brooks
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Happiness tends to be individual; we measure it by asking,"Are you happy?" Joy tends to be self-transcending. Happiness is something you pursue; joy is something that rises up unexpectedly and sweeps over you. Happiness comes from accomplishments; joy comes from offering gifts. Happiness fades; we get used to the things that used to make us happy. Joy doesn't fade.
To live with joy is to live with wonder, gratitude, and hope. People who are on the second mountain have been transformed. They are deeply committed. The outpouring of love has become a steady force.
~ The Second Mountain
David Brooks
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We can help create happiness, but we are seized by joy. We are pleased by happiness, but we are transformed by joy. When we experience joy, we often feel we have glimpsed into a deeper and truer layer of reality.
~ The Second Mountain
David Brooks
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Happiness involves a victory for the self, an expansion of self. Happiness comes as we move toward our goals, when things go our way. Happiness often has to do with some success, some new ability, or some heightned sensual pleasure. Joy tends to involve some transcendence of self. Joy often involves self-forgetting.
Happiness is what we aim for on the first mountain. Joy is a by-product of living on the second mountain.
~ The Second Mountain
David Brooks
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A commitment is making a promise to something without expecting a reward. A commitment is falling in love with something and then building a structure of behavior around it for those moments when love falters.
~ The Second Mountain
David Brooks
***
“You don’t know nothin’ about them.” Eli bit off every word. “Or about me and my kin, neither. You only know what we let you know.”
~ Necessary Lies
Diane Chamberlain
***
We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
My new knowledge blew life into the story. It began to breathe. And as it did so, it began to mend. The jagged edges smoothed themselves. The gaps filled themselves in. The missing parts were regenerated. Puzzles explained themselves, and mysteries were mysteries no longer.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes—characters even—caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
.. her eyes were so full of beauty to leave room for anything so mundane as intelligence.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
Her mouth opened and closed; as soon as her words fell from her lips they were smothered by the blanket of silence that descended and extinguished them. The same silence swallowed our footfalls, and muffled the opening and closing of doors as she showed me, one after another, the dining room, the drawing room, the music room.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
There is one thing on which we are agreed: There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
..by a curious paradox, just as the books come to life when we read them, so the oils from our fingertips destroy them as we turn the pages.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
..at eight o’clock the world came to an end. It was reading time.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
What happened to me in that moment? Inside my head everything came to pieces and came back together differently, in one of those kaleidoscopic reorganizations the brain is capable of.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
There is something about words. In expert words, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves round your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
Thanks to my work, I am experienced in the reading of difficult manuscripts. There is no great secret to it. Patience and practice are all that is required. That and the willingness to cultivate an inner eye. When you read a manuscript that has been damaged by water, fire, light or just the passing of the years, your eye needs to study not just the shape of the letters but other marks of production. The speed of the pen. The pressure of the hand on the page. Breaks and releases in the flow. You must relax. Think of nothing. Until you awake into a dream where you are at once a pen flying over vellum and the vellum itself with the touch of ink tickling your surface. Then you can read it. The intention of the writer, his thoughts, his hesitations, his longings and his meaning. You can read as clearly as if you were the very candlelight illuminating the page as the pen speeds over it.
~ The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
***
..Good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.
~ Trump: The Art of the Deal
Donald J. Trump, Tony Schwartz (With)
***
The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
~ The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
***
Authors E
***
Day after day Matt tramped the woods alone, trying to shake the doubts that walked beside him like his own shadow.
~ The Sign of the Beaver
Elizabeth George Speare
***
There are more tales to be told, more spells to be woven, more adventures to be had.
But all stories must “begin at the beginning” and so it is with this one.
So please, let me tell you a story…
~ War Prize
Elizabeth Vaughan
***
You ever been on the freeway, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic? And when you finally get to the head of the line, you realise the backup is because of an accident? Maybe not a bad one -- maybe just a fender bender that's already been moved to the side of the road. And all the traffic -- all that wasted time -- is because every driver who passes the scene has to slow down and take a look.
It's ridiculous, isn't it? And you swear that when you pass by, you're not going to look -- Just on principle alone. But when you get there, and you're driving past the dented doors and flashing lights and smashed bumpers, what do you do?
You slow down and look. You didn't want to, but you can't help it. It's morbid. Absurd. But that's human nature for you.
~ Tangled
Emma Chase
***
Wounds heal, right?
Memories wash thin.
Broken hearts mend.
That’s how it’s supposed to be. How we survive.
~ Dragonfly
Erica Hayes
***
Authors F
***
***
Authors G
***
A man of the Night's Watch lives his life for the realm.
Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the honor of this house or that house,
neither for gold nor glory nor a woman's love, but for the realm, and all the people in it.
A man of the Night's Watch takes no wife and fathers no sons.
Our wife is duty.
Our mistress is honor.
And you are the only sons we shall ever know.
~ A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin
***
Stone was a bastard's name in the Vale, as Snow was in the north, and Flowers in Highgarden; in each of the Seven Kingdoms, custom had fashioned a surname for children born with no names of their own.
~ A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin
***
Winter is coming, and when the Long Night falls, only the Night's Watch will stand between the realm and the darkness that sweeps from the north.
~ A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin
***
When I was a boy, it was said that a long summer always meant a long winter to come.
This summer has lasted nine years, Tyrion, and a tenth will soon be upon us.
Think on that.
~ A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin
***
I contain and I compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you’d never guess from looking at me.
~ Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
***
They flitted in and out of my life like well-timed stage actors, one going out the door as the other came in..
~ Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
***
Louvaen Duenda had an answer for most things and an argument for everything else.
She didn’t debate; she went to war.
~ Entreat Me
Grace Draven
***
“My father’s eyes were also black.” Her full lower lip flattened, and her throat worked to hold back laughter. “Does the penchant for being hit in the face run in the family? What an odd trait to pass on to your descendents.”
~ Entreat Me
Grace Draven
***
She’s always been a scold in the morning.”
He huffed and raised his tankard in mock toast to Louvaen.
“You must live a life of eternal morning.”
~ Entreat Me
Grace Draven
***
“It isn’t meant to be unless Gavin has seduced you, and you’re lying to me. Then it isn’t an insult, only an insightful question.” Her scowl was fierce. “It best never be an insightful question while you remain unmarried.”
~ Entreat Me
Grace Draven
***
‘So,’ I said, ‘your advice is the same as Phil’s: tolerate school because things may be better later in life?’
Now that I said it myself, it sounded like a terrible philosophy for an eleven-year-old with six and a half years of schooling remaining. Calculated as a percentage of the time he had lived so far, it was the equivalent of me accepting unhappiness now because life would improve after the age of eighty-one.
~ The Rosie Result
Graeme Simsion
***
‘Gene is extremely dangerous and should be avoided socially.’
‘He didn’t seem dangerous to me. He seemed very nice.’ Inge was smiling.
‘That’s why he’s dangerous. If he seemed dangerous, he would be less dangerous.’
~ The Rosie Effect
Graeme Simsion
***
I was able to reassure my mother that Rosie and I were fine, work was also fine and any thanks for my uncle’s improved prognosis should be directed to medical science rather than a deity who had presumably allowed my uncle to develop cancer.
~ The Rosie Effect
Graeme Simsion
***
Authors H
***
Every time was the last time. Every time was the first time.
~ A Hopeless Romantic
Harriet Evans
***
‘You know,’ he said, smiling kindly at me as he packed the pictures away, ‘family doesn’t always mean blood, Anna. Sometimes a person will just find themselves somewhere and they will realise that the folk around them can love and be loved every bit as much as a mother or father, sister or aunt, and sometimes,’ he added meaningfully, ‘even more.’
~ Sleigh Rides and Silver Bells at the Christmas Fair
Heidi Swain
***
This is life, and we all have to die sooner or later. It is when I do not know for certain whether I can help or not, or should help or not, that things become so difficult.
~ Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
In neuroscience it is called ‘the binding problem’ – the extraordinary fact, which nobody can even begin to explain, that mere brute matter can give rise to consciousness and sensation.
~ Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
Dying is rarely easy, whatever we might wish to think.
Our bodies will not let us off the hook of life without a struggle.
You don’t just speak a few meaningful last words to your tearful family and then breathe your last.
If you don’t die violently, choking or coughing, or in a coma, you must gradually be worn away, the flesh shrivelling off your bones, your skin and eyes turning deep yellow if your liver is failing, your voice weakening, until, near the end, you haven’t even the strength to open your eyes, and you lie motionless on your death bed, the only movement your gasping breath.
Gradually you become unrecognizable – at least you lose all the details that made your face characteristically your own, and the contours of your face are worn away down to the anonymous outlines of your underlying skull.
~ Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
Surgeons must always tell the truth but rarely, if ever, deprive patients of all hope. It can be very difficult to find the balance between optimism and realism.
There are degrees of malignancy with tumours and you never know what will happen to the individual patient in front of you – there are always a few long-term survivors – not miracles but statistical outliers.
~ Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
Most neurosurgeons become increasingly conservative as they get older – meaning that they advise surgery in fewer patients than when they were younger.
I certainly have – but not just because I am more experienced than in the past and more realistic about the limitations of surgery.
It is also because I have become more willing to accept that it can be better to let somebody die rather than to operate when there is only a very small chance of the person returning to an independent life.
~ Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
A famous English surgeon once remarked that a surgeon has to have nerves of steel, the heart of a lion and the hands of a woman.
~ Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
Doctors are human, just like the rest of us.
Much of what happens in hospitals is a matter of luck, both good and bad; success and failure are often out of the doctor’s control. Knowing when not to operate is just as important as knowing how to operate, and is a more difficult skill to acquire.
~ Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
‘Every surgeon carries within himself a small cemetery, where from time to time he goes to pray – a place of bitterness and regret, where he must look for an explanation for his failures.’
~ René Leriche
La philosophie de la chirurgie, 1951
~ Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
The only meaning of death is how I live my life now and what I will have to look back upon as I lie dying.
~ Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
We have to choose between probabilities, not certainties, and that is difficult.
How probable is it that we will gain how many extra years of life, and what might the quality of those years be, if we submit ourselves to the pain and unpleasantness of treatment?
And what is the probability that the treatment will cause severe side effects that outweigh any possible benefits?
When we are young it is usually easy to decide – but when we are old, and reaching the end of our likely lifespan?
~ Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
... doctors deal with probabilities, not certainties. Sometimes, if you are to make the right decision, you have to accept that you might be wrong.
~ Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
When you are feeling fit and well, it is relatively easy to entertain the fantasy of dying with dignity by taking your own life, as death is still remote.
~ Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh
***
I grew this summer. Not on the outside, but on the inside. And that’s the only place where growing really matters.
~ Short
Holly Goldberg Sloan
***
The ability to keep your mouth shut is usually a sign of intelligence. Introspection requires you to think and analyze. It’s hard to do that when you are blabbing away.
~ Counting by 7s
Holly Goldberg Sloan
***
Authors I
***
The heavens opened, and the realization fell out and hit me on the head.
~ Burn for Me
Ilona Andrews
***
A minute passed. Another. Time slowed to a crawl.
Funny how long a minute can last.
If you're reading a good book, it flies by.
If you're holding your breath, it moves slower than a snail.
~ Clean Sweep
Ilona Andrews
***
“We just met and she knows me so well.”
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
We stopped at the same rack. Two nearly identical swords waited before us, each thirty-two inches long.
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
“I didn’t think I had a fighting style,” Hugh said. “If it comes within range, I can kill it, but I thought what I did was a hodgepodge of techniques that worked. It’s not something one ponders: what is my special brand of violence? And then I saw you. Admit it, you felt it.”
I did. I’d never before seen anyone who fought like me. We had been completely in sync, so perfectly that the memory of it was disturbing. He looked at me. “I want to experience it again. Spar with me.”
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
“There are thousands of shapeshifters. Kill a hundred and there are always more. But there hasn’t been another one like you for five thousand years. I would slaughter everyone in that room below for a shot at a single conversation with you.”
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
“Look at them. They think this gathering is about them, their petty territorial clashes, their problems, their lusts, wants, and needs. They gorge themselves, squabble, and flash their fangs, and all the while they have no idea that it is all about you.”
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
I backed away until my spine touched Hugh’s.
I had no idea how, but I had known with one hundred percent certainty that his back would be there to brace me.
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
“So,” Hugh said. “You never told me. Did you like the flowers I sent?”
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
“You’ll try, and I will enjoy that, too. I meant what I said, Kate. You make me feel that interesting something. That’s rare for me. And I like having you around. You’re funny.”
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
Hugh opened his mouth. “Uncle.” It wasn’t a surrender. It was a dare.
A year ago I might’ve mistaken it for something else or convinced myself I was reading too much into it, but a year of being in love and being wanted gave me enough of a basis to identify that look.
Hugh was turned on. It wasn’t an act. This was real.
Damn it all to hell. Do not react.
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
If you ever disappeared, I would leave the Pack and I would look for you until I found you. However long it took.”
I knew he wasn’t lying.
~ Magic Rises
Ilona Andrews
***
"Curran never does anything without a reason,"
~ Magic Bites
Ilona Andrews
***
Authors J
***
...psychiatry has reclassified more and more of our natural human behaviors and feelings as psychiatric disorders requiring treatment. By doing so, psychiatry has not only expanded its jurisdiction over more of us (one in four of us apparently now suffers from a mental disorder) but has also, by inflating the number of mental disorders, created a huge market for psychiatric treatments.
The preferred treatments are pharmaceutical treatments such as antidepressants and antipsychotics.
But the emerging reality is that these treatments don’t actually work in the way most people believe.
~ Cracked: The Unhappy Truth about Psychiatry
James Davies
***
...pharmaceutical companies have histories of concealing evidence that they deem inconvenient.
...whether this concealment is achieved by crudely suppressing negative data or by subtly manipulating research to show their drugs in the most positive light, the unpalatable truth about psychiatric drugs is that manipulation of research has been a critical reason for their popular success.
...nearly all research into psychiatric drugs is today sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry and how this arrangement has led to the compromise of basic scientific standards, and at worst to the outright manipulation of research with the aim of maintaining or increasing company profits.
~ Cracked: The Unhappy Truth about Psychiatry
James Davies
***
Morellis house was a destination for him. Ranger's apartment felt like part of his journey.
~ Lean Mean Thirteen
Janet Evanovich
***
'I'm dessert,' he said.
'Something that gives me pleasure, but isn't especially good for me?'
'Something that could never be the base of your food pyramid.'
See, here's where I was in trouble. Dessert was the base of my food pyramid!
~ Twelve Sharp
Janet Evanovich
***
'Can I buy you dinner and a movie and a room at Hotel Morelli?'
~ Twelve Sharp
Janet Evanovich
***
The main difference between Morelli and Ranger was that when Morelli got mad he got loud. And when Ranger got mad he got quiet. They were both equally scary.
~ Eleven on Top
Janet Evanovich
***
I checked my phone messages. Three in all. The first was from Joe. "Hey, cupcake." That was it. That was the whole message. The second was from Ranger. "Yo." Ranger made Joe look like a chatterbox. The third was a hang-up.
~ To the Nines
Janet Evanovich
***
"She used to be so smart," Grandma said. "And then she moved to California. Think all that California sun dried her brain up like a raisin..
~ Hard Eight
Janet Evanovich
***
"Sure. No talking. My lips are sealed. Look at me, I'm locking my lips and throwing the key away."
~ Hard Eight
Janet Evanovich
***
And then what would I tell Joe?
We sort of had an agreement.
Except neither of us knew exactly what the agreement meant.
In fact, now that I thought about it, maybe we didn't have an agreement at all.
Actually, it was more like we were in agreement negotiations.
~ High Five
Janet Evanovich
***
Two hours later, Tank was comfortably slouched in his chair, arms crossed, eyes slitted but vigilant, watching the door.
His metabolism had dropped to reptilian.
No rise and fall of his chest.
No shifting of position—250 pounds of security in suspended animation.
~ High Five
Janet Evanovich
***
Grandma Mazur reads the obituary columns like they're part of the paper's entertainment section.
Other communities have country clubs and fraternal orders. The burg has funeral parlors.
If people stopped dying, the social life of the burg would come to a grinding halt.
~ Two for the Dough
Janet Evanovich
***
Food is important in the burg. The moon revolves around the earth, the earth revolves around the sun, and the burg revolves around pot roast.
For as long as I can remember, my parents' lives have been controlled by five-pound pieces of rolled rump, done to perfection at six o'clock.
~ One for the Money
Janet Evanovich
***
According to convention, the name of a holy woman has to be comprised of two syllables, each formed by a three-stroke hieratic character. That number in our names—six—reminds us we are deficient on two counts, not worthy even in our written names to approach the sacred number 8. Firstly, we're deficient because we are human and not dragon. Secondly, we are female.
~ Touched by Venom
Janine Cross
***
Tradition is not something to be followed without question, Zarq. It's rarely as pure and correct as it's made out to be. All tradition means is that something has become accepted over time. That's all. It's good to question such things.
~ Touched by Venom
Janine Cross
***
Sometimes things turn out the way we want. Sometimes they don't. We decide how miserable we want to be.
~ Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent
Janis Abrahms Spring and Michael Spring
***
Life has come full circle, it seems. The child has become the parent; the parent, the child. But the analogy is misleading. As a parent, you invest in your children's future. If they're healthy, you can expect them to grow and thrive. Your freedom comes with their independence. It's a life-affirming transformation for both of you.
Caring for an elderly father or mother is another story. You invest time and patience only to see them regress and become more helpless and disabled. Your release is paid for with their lives. There is no next chapter.
~ Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent
Janis Abrahms Spring and Michael Spring
***
Is there a more precious gift a parent can give a child than words of praise?
Is there a more precious gift a child can give a parent than words of gratitude?
~ Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent
Janis Abrahms Spring and Michael Spring
***
Research shows that as people age they tend to forgive more easily. How do they do it? Is it that, nearing the end of their lives, they opt to pack lighter, refusing to take their bitterness or sorrow with them to the grave?
...However they accomplish it, they decide to move beyond their grievances and try to enjoy what's left of the journey.
~ Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent
Janis Abrahms Spring and Michael Spring
***
In the end, your mother may not deserve your love. You choose to care for her not because of who she is, but because of who you are. Because you couldn't live with yourself otherwise. And so you trudge on and indulge her, never giving up the hope that someday, before she dies, she'll notice, and say thank you.
~ Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent
Janis Abrahms Spring and Michael Spring
***
However difficult it is for you to care for an ungrateful mother, it's harder for her to admit her dependence on you. The more she needs you, the more she may resent you. There's an old Yiddish proverb: when parents feed their children, they both laugh; when children feed their parents, they both cry.
~ Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent
Janis Abrahms Spring and Michael Spring
***
... Your mother is ninety-two. By now, she is who she is. Your emotional health hinges on your ability to stop insisting that she change, and work on changing the way you think about her.
~ Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent
Janis Abrahms Spring and Michael Spring
***
The power to make health-care decisions for another human being is daunting, more than we deserve, more than we want, more than we signed up for.
~ Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent
Janis Abrahms Spring and Michael Spring
***
Some people use language as a weapon to put others down or build themselves up. Dad uses it like a feather, tickling them with humour, making them laugh and relax. I'm learning how important this asset is when you're old and alone. It's then that your achievements no longer give you a leg up in the world, and who you're related to matters less than how you relate. At Dad's age, it's not your money, it's your ability to get along, your social grace, that makes you rich.
~ Life with Pop: Lessons on Caring for an Aging Parent
Janis Abrahms Spring and Michael Spring
***
Why would a dead girl lie? Answer: Because she can’t stand up.
~ Thirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher
***
Straw soldiers who, under her guidance, could be spun into threads of pure gold for the tapestry she needed to weave.
~ Hellfire
Jean Johnson
***
We all do what we think is best. Sometimes we make terrible mistakes, sometimes we do the right thing. Sometimes we never know. We just have to hope.
~ The Winter People
Jennifer McMahon
***
..death is not an ending, but a beginning. The dead cross over to the world of the spirits and are surrounding us still.
~ The Winter People
Jennifer McMahon
***
.. art holds magic. It captures how it feels to be alive, with all its aches and sorrows and joys.
~ A Forgery of Roses
Jessica S. Olson
***
Panic crawls through my limbs, turning my hands clammy. Cold, wet fingers slick down my spine. I force myself to breathe through my nose even as the frigid air burns my nostrils.
~ A Forgery of Roses
Jessica S. Olson
***
A love for books is the best indicator of a curious mind.
~ A Forgery of Roses
Jessica S. Olson
***
I may not be in total control of what happens to my life, but I certainly am in charge of how I choose to perceive my experience.
~ My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
Jill Bolte Taylor
***
Most of the different types of cells in our body die and are replaced every few weeks or months. However, neurons, the primary cell of the nervous system, do not multiply (for the most part) after we are born. That means that the majority of the neurons in your brain today are as old as you are. This longevity of the neurons partially accounts for why we feel pretty much the same on the inside at the age of 10 as we do at age 30 or 77. The cells in our brain are the same but over time their connections change based upon their/our experience.
~ My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
Jill Bolte Taylor
***
Magic came from life itself, from the interaction of nature and the elements, from the energy of all living beings, and especially of people.
~ Storm Front
Jim Butcher
***
I looked at the trees.
Saw them, not just in the first green coat of spring, but in the full bloom of summer, the splendor of the fall, and the barren desolation of winter, all at the same time.
~ Storm Front
Jim Butcher
***
A problem is something to solve... If there’s no solution, it’s not a problem, so stop treating it like one.
~ This Is Where I Leave You
Jonathan Tropper
***
We can all nod and smile and carry on our end of the conversation in an endless loop while our minds float somewhere outside our bodies.
~ This Is Where I Leave You
Jonathan Tropper
***
Death is often the consequence of choices we make.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
Possibilities were the children of hope.
.. keeping hope alive is to know how to keep going.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
If our journey has not known struggle and we have experienced little or no obstacles, then whatever we have gained may not be seem worthwhile to us, be it riches, or status, or title, or anything else. If we have not known struggle, then neither have we learned the value of hope.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
Hope is one of the sparks by which life sustains itself. The ability to hope is one of life's greatest gifts. The moment we hope that all will end well, that we can accomplish what we set out to do, we have likely insured that we will gain the outcome we hope for. At the very least we have increased the odds in our favour.
There are no guarantees that hope will bring the desired outcome. But if we do not or cannot hope we have empowered the cause of our difficulty.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
There are things other than death that can take away our will to go on. Like despair, because nothing can cripple us more than the loss of hope. Weariness may, and does attack our body and mind. But despair takes aim at the soul.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
Life gives and life takes. Life takes our time, and every day is one day closer to the end of our journey on this Earth.
Yet life does gives us much more than the obvious.
If we can learn to look back on the difficulties we have known, whether old or new, then we have moved past them, at least in time. That we are looking back at a tough experience from the perspective of the present moment means we have survived it. The experience may have taken a toll, as difficulties do, but whatever our losses may have been, we have survived.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
Not to face life is not to gain experience, and not to gain experience limits knowledge. Without knowledge we cannot achieve wisdom.
To have it all we must face life, no matter what.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
As we make our journey, many of us succumb to measuring ourselves and others, by how much worldly goods we have acquired, or can acquire. The false lesson is that he or she who has the most is the best.
It is true that wealth buys power and influence, but it does not buy morality, or kindness, or compassion.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
Within you is the will to win, as well as the willingness to lose...
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
Weaknesses and strengths are necessary for balance. No one or nothing is only weak or only strong. But some of us overlook our weaknesses, and even deny that we have them. That can be dangerous, because denying there is a weakness is in itself a weakness. Likewise, accepting that we have weaknesses becomes a strength. And by the same token, overestimating strength is a weakness. You should not be blinded by your strengths. The feeling of strength is not the same as having strength. Neither should you ignore your weaknesses. Know them well.
When all is said and done, accept who you are in the moment you are living. In the end, wisdom is born of weaknesses as well as strengths.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
It is certain we will not know when or how the difficult and bad times will come, but if we accept that they will come, then they are easier to face when they do.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
It is only natural for you to think and to wish, and sometimes even to pray, that the bad things do not happen in your life.
You must learn that the answers to those wishes and prayers have already been given to you before you wished and prayed.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
Life is life - it is what it is. It offers no certainties, except that it will go on with or without you. The sun will rise and set every day. So do the seasons follow their unerring cycle, waiting for no one or nothing. The seasons turn into years and the years into ages. Neither waiting nor caring if you join them, but never denying your choice to do so. They will go, and so must you because your journey is waiting. And in your journey you will learn reality and balance.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
Without falling, how would you know when to stand?
Without hunger, how would you learn to appreciate abundance?
Without bad, how would you measure good?
Without the finality of death, how would we appreciate life?
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
Life is not easy. But that is the way it is and we cannot change it. The only thing we can do is try to understand it.
~ Keep Going
Joseph M. Marshall III
***
If you're reading this book, you've probably already guessed that Mr. Velcoff represented me on this project as well, which also went for a significant advance. You can hunt around for the exact dollar amount on the Internet if you're curious.
But let me remind you that it really doesn't matter. I would have written this book for nothing, for it was a story I simply had to tell.
~ The Color of Heaven
Julianne MacLean
***
Authors K
***
I felt numb, as if my nerve endings had been scattered into the wind like a dandelion, leaving a bare stem of simple weariness.
~ The House on Tradd Street
Karen White
***
On one side of me was Camden McQueen, on the other was Javier Bernal.
One more light than dark, one more dark than light.
~ Bold Tricks
Karina Halle
***
If you were to ever leave me, I'd come looking for you, on every street.
~ On Every Street
Karina Halle
***
One minute we were a memory in the making, and in the next we were just a memory.
~ Love, in English
Karina Halle
***
Love, in English, is love...
Love in Spanish is you.
~ Love, in English
Karina Halle
***
The real ghosts are the ones that take up residence in your mind...
~ The Girl in the Photograph
Kate Riordan
***
Fragments of memory were flitting through her mind. They came so fast, bats across a darkening sky, that she hadn't yet been able to grasp one and examine it.
~ The Girl in the Photograph
Kate Riordan
***
Living is precious, and is perhaps best appreciated when we live with the end in mind.
~ With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial
Kathryn Mannix
***
Open discussion reduces superstition and fear, and allows us to be honest with each other at a time when pretence and well-intentioned lies can separate us, wasting time that is very precious.
~ With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial
Kathryn Mannix
***
There are only two days with fewer than twenty-four hours in each lifetime, sitting like bookends astride our lives: one is celebrated every year, yet it is the other that makes us see living as precious.
~ With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial
Kathryn Mannix
***
Immortality seems in many ways an uninviting option. It is the fact that every day counts us down that makes each one such a gift.
~ With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial
Kathryn Mannix
***
.. a mistake isn’t always a mistake,” he said. “Sometimes a mistake is actually an opportunity, but we just can’t see it right then and there. Do you know what I mean?
~ Front Desk
Kelly Yang
***
No, I thought as a blue ball of flame smashed into the far wall and exploded. Those stars were real.
...and for a heartbeat we watched, mesmerized, as the flickering blue flame plastered itself in a sunburst across the ugly yellow wall until it folded back in on itself and vanished with a pop.
~ Dead Witch Walking
Kim Harrison
***
He’s just everywhere but nowhere at all.
~ Connected
Kim Karr
***
The link between genius and madness,..., wasn't that geniuses were close to being insane. It was that they saw dimensions inaccessible to the rest of us.
~ After the Fall
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
***
..and my future — whatever it is — will be the mystery it always was.
The mystery it should be.
The mystery it will always be.
~ Red Letter Day
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
***
People disappear because they want to. They disappear to escape a bad life, or a mistake they've made, or they disappear to save themselves from a horrible death. A person who has disappeared never wants to be found.
~ The Retrieval Artist
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
***
"You suspect me?" Flint asked. "We don't have enough information to suspect anyone right now," Nyquist said. Flint smiled coldly. "You mean, you suspect everyone right now." Nyquist nodded. "That's the other way to put it," he said.
~ Paloma
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
***
The police didn't like Retrieval Artists, anyway; that Flint — a former detective, considered one of the city's best — had gone to that barely legal world made them angry.
~ Paloma
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
***
Authors L
***
Never judge a book by its cover.
It seems what people try to represent on the outside very rarely mirrors their inside.
Beautiful people tend to be ugly, ugly people tend to be beautiful, storms tend to brew below a person’s cool, calm exterior, and tremendously happy people tend to be overcompensating for their own grief.
Nothing is ever really what it seems.
~ The Resurrection of Aubrey Miller
L. B. Simmons
***
I'm not sure there are enough white roses in the world to make me forget Richard....
But I'm not sure there are enough cozy afternoons in all eternity to make me forget Jean-Claude.
~ Burnt Offerings
Laurell K. Hamilton
***
The truth was so tightly braided with secrets that I could not easily say anything without saying too much.
~ Wolf Hollow
Lauren Wolk
***
The sound of her name penetrated her every cell and seemed to scatter her molecules beyond the boundaries of her own skin. She watched herself from the far corner of the room.
~ Still Alice
Lisa Genova
***
I tried to sit and relax, but the latter wasn't happening, so the former was impossible.
~ The Grendel Affair
Lisa Shearin
***
Dragons didn’t fool around when it came to protecting things that they acquired—be it gold, gems, or a monster’s body parts.
The Grendel Affair
Lisa Shearin
***
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Those two words said everything, but told me nothing.
~ The Trouble & Demons
Lisa Shearin
***
I answered by not answering.
~ Armed and Magical
Lisa Shearin
***
“You’re avoiding my question.” “You’re ignoring my avoiding.”
~ Armed and Magical
Lisa Shearin
***
My headache had officially arrived and was setting up house between my eyes.
~ Armed and Magical
Lisa Shearin
***
So close, yet so far.
~ Magic Lost, Trouble Found
Lisa Shearin
***
The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.
~ The Giver
Lois Lowry
***
It was only the first hint of a slightly lightening sky: a pale gleam at the edge of the meadow, a sign that far away somewhere, to the east where Sweden still slept, morning would be coming soon. Dawn would creep across the Swedish farmland and coast; then it would wash little Denmark with light and move across the North Sea to wake Norway.
~ Number the Stars
Lois Lowry
***
It was harder for the ones who were waiting, Annemarie knew. Less danger, perhaps, but more fear.
~ Number the Stars
Lois Lowry
***
It is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything.
~ Number the Stars
Lois Lowry
***
When you have so many people that need you and depend on you, you can't think only about what you want and your passions. Your goals and actions are not just about you. Life is not, and never will be, just about you.
~ After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy - One Survivor's Story
Lou Kasischke
***
I must never forget that the first voice, the voice of my ambition, gave me the strength to go to the top - and almost killed me. And I must never forget that the last voice, the voice of the heart, gave me the greater strength to say no to the top - and saved my life.
~ After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy - One Survivor's Story
Lou Kasischke
***
Someone long ago coined a great saying about mountain climbers: There are old mountaineers and there are bold mountaineers; but there are no old, bold mountaineers. If you gave everything you have to get to the top, or if getting there was the only thing that mattered - you might stay there.
~ After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy - One Survivor's Story
Lou Kasischke
***
On summit day especially, the dilemma you face was to be ambitious, but not greedy; to be bold, but not reckless; to be confident, but not arrogant.
~ After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy - One Survivor's Story
Lou Kasischke
***
When things go wrong, rarely is the cause a force of nature. Almost always the cause is climber error. Even what might appear to be the result of an act or force of nature can be traced back to a mistake in decision making that unnecessarily exposed the climber to nature's dangers. On Everest, this decision making risk was especially true on summit day.
~ After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy - One Survivor's Story
Lou Kasischke
***
Climbing is about the richness of living a story. A whole story. Standing on top of the mountain is only part of the story. And frequent not even the most important part. The climbing story I live is not one single moment. In the story of getting to the top, many moments are more meaningful and more worthy of memory.
~ After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy - One Survivor's Story
Lou Kasischke
***
Hours later, I would be fighting for my life. Hours later, others would be dying on the mountain.
Years later, I would be fighting to understand. Years later, I wanted to forget. Years later, I could never forget.
Today, I give thanks.
~ After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy - One Survivor's Story
Lou Kasischke
***
Mere moments later, physical toughness and sheer will to climb a mountain of rock, snow and ice meant nothing. What meant everything was what it would take to overcome a mountain of ambition and pressure to succeed, and to make a hard choice.
~ After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy - One Survivor's Story
Lou Kasischke
***
In climbing, there is only one thing worse than not reaching the summit. And that is when others do, and you don't.
~ After the Wind: 1996 Everest Tragedy - One Survivor's Story
Lou Kasischke
***
Sleep is a shallow death we practice every night.
City after city, as the earth turns and rolls around the sun, we lie down and close our eyes.
We try out this thing, death, for a eight-hour stretch.
~ How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky
Lydia Netzer
***
Authors M
***
Blue eyes stared at me for a long minute, something unreadable swimming in their depths.
~ Shadow Kin
M. J. Scott
***
One corner of his mouth lifted and a dimple cracked to life in his cheek.
~ Shadow Kin
M. J. Scott
***
...just how strange and complicated adults are. As a kid you assume you know them because you see them often, and because they care for you. But for every adult person you look up to in life there is trailing behind them an invisible chain gang of ghosts, all of which, as a child, you are generously spared from meeting.
~ My Sunshine Away
M. O. Walsh
***
Tidying is the act of confronting yourself; cleaning is the act of confronting nature.
~ Spark Joy
Marie Kondo
***
...you know my father. He’s a man who goes deaf when somebody says the word no to him. And he doesn’t get his hearing back until they answer him with a yes...
~ The Godfather
Mario Puzo
***
Lawyers can steal more money with a briefcase than a thousand men with guns and masks.
~ The Godfather
Mario Puzo
***
Only a Sicilian born to the ways of omerta, the law of silence, could be trusted in the key post of Consigliere.
~ The Godfather
Mario Puzo
***
It is important to educate people that AD is not a loss of self. It is a gradual change in self that eventually affects the physical and cognitive abilities but retains the inner emotional connection.
~ A Look Inside Alzheimer's
Marjorie N. Allen, Susan Dublin and Patricia J. Kimmerly
***
At present, it's a matter of accepting the inevitable and finding the routine that will allow appreciation of what life offers.
~ A Look Inside Alzheimer's
Marjorie N. Allen, Susan Dublin and Patricia J. Kimmerly
***
We're all on these sorts of apps for different things, but clarity, transparency and honesty are all good things to show off for yourself.
~ 16 Swipes: No Breakfast
Mark Powell
***
I don't know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn't that, it's that I don't want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me.
~ All Systems Red
Martha Wells
***
...she said, and looked at me for what objectively I knew was 2.4 seconds and subjectively about twenty excruciating minutes.
~ All Systems Red
Martha Wells
***
I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son Ian died at El Alamein—side by side with Eli’s father, John—visitors offering their condolences, meaning to comfort me, said, ‘Life goes on.’ What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn’t. It’s death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and for ever. There’s no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it. Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede.
~ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
***
That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you on to another book, and another bit there will lead you on to a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
~ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
***
You don't have to understand life. You just have to live it.
~ The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
***
Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.
~ The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
***
‘Science tells us that the “grey zone” between life and death is a mysterious place. There is a singular point at which we are not one thing or another. Or rather we are both. Alive and dead. And in that moment between the two binaries, sometimes, just sometimes, we turn ourselves into a Schrödinger’s cat who may not only be alive or dead but may be every quantum possibility that exists in line with the universal wave function, including the possibility where we are chatting in a communal kitchen in Longyearbyen at one in the morning ...’
~ The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
***
Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently.
~ The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
***
Want is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely.
~ The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
***
Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations.
~ The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
***
History was – is – a one-way street. You have to keep walking forwards. But you don’t always need to look ahead. Sometimes you can just look around and be happy right where you are.
~ How to Stop Time
Matt Haig
***
To talk about memories is to live them a little.
~ How to Stop Time
Matt Haig
***
Keep going, not because it's easy, but because that is what it is to be human.
~ Places I Stopped on the Way Home
Meg Fee
***
Our job is not to create a masterpiece, but to give voice to that which only we can give voice to. Our job is to go to work doing that which we feel called to do.
~ Places I Stopped on the Way Home
Meg Fee
***
.. loneliness, stripped of the many layers in which we dress it, is fundamentally the same.
~ Places I Stopped on the Way Home
Meg Fee
***
Already I know we are on borrowed time - that it's only lasted as long as it has because we met at a time when loneliness flitted at the edge of every image, threatening and ever-present.
~ Places I Stopped on the Way Home
Meg Fee
***
Perhaps life, inevitably, is like that - until it happens to you, you have no concept of how everything could disappear in seconds. We all lack perspective on what matters.
So please, pause and appreciate exactly what you have. Don't get angry about discarded socks or wet towels dumped on the floor or traffic jams - these things are irrelevant. Don't waste time and energy moaning about your job, your relationship, the weather or your unfulfilled aspirations.
We only have one life and, take it from me, we should never waste it. So get busy living or get busy dying. Cherish the people you love, change your job, tilt up your face and kiss the rain, follow your dreams. Because you can.
~ The World I Fell Out Of
Melanie Reid
***
Too much of a healthy life, when you take it for granted, is spent in a whirl of plans, achievements, expectation and wanting, trying to bend time to your will. Only when this is taken away from you do you start to understand the simplicity of being where you are, with what you can see, and the wind you can feel on your face.
~ The World I Fell Out Of
Melanie Reid
***
In life there are golden ages, but the frustrating thing about golden ages is that you don't appreciate you're in one when you're in it.
The art of living well, I think, is to understand how swiftly you get old, and to learn to identify golden ages as quickly as possible. And the real secret is not to be always looking forward, plotting the fulfillment of tomorrow, the job you haven't yet got, the perfect partner you haven't met... Instead, focus on what constitutes your life at the time and love what you already have.
~ The World I Fell Out Of
Melanie Reid
***
..life-changing injuries led to further complications which changed your life even more. Ill health created more ill health. For every action there was a consequence.
~ The World I Fell Out Of
Melanie Reid
***
In the chair I could also access the back of my head with a brush for the first time: by now my bedhead didn't just resemble an eagle's nest; in this one you could hear the chicks hatching.
~ The World I Fell Out Of
Melanie Reid
***
We're always blissfully ignorant and complacent leading up to life-changing events.
~ The World I Fell Out Of
Melanie Reid
***
The real reason we read is to get an injection of empathy; to help ourselves break out of the shell of our own experiences, and enter other human lives, so that we can understand this business of being alive just a little bit better.
~ The World I Fell Out Of
Melanie Reid
***
Life is not about how many breaths you take, but about how many moments take your breath away.
~ Getting Things Off My Chest: A Survivor’s Guide to Staying Fearless and Fabulous in the Face of Breast Cancer
Melanie Young
***
Ask the right questions, get the right facts, and decide, along with your team of medical advisors, how to keep yourself healthy.
~ Getting Things Off My Chest: A Survivor’s Guide to Staying Fearless and Fabulous in the Face of Breast Cancer
Melanie Young
***
You can visit doctors for medical advice, but it takes a real survivor to provide the life essentials for getting you through a breast cancer diagnosis, or any cancer diagnosis.
~ Getting Things Off My Chest: A Survivor’s Guide to Staying Fearless and Fabulous in the Face of Breast Cancer
Melanie Young
***
Love is infinite.
There is no beginning and no end.
There is no starting point and no finishing line.
Love just is.
Love is born, grows, matures, and sometimes it dies.
But the memory will remain with you for the rest of your breathing hours.
You fall in love, you fall out of love.
But you will love again.
You always do.
~Arsen
Mia Asher
***
He was the fire that burned my marriage down to ashes, but in those ashes, hope was reborn.
He healed me. Arsen.
~Arsen
Mia Asher
***
They say being in love and loving someone are two different things.
Falling in love with someone is easy.
It's loving when the newness has worn off, when life gets tough, when things get in the way, when physical passion is gone, that true love remains. When love conquers it all.
When you fall out of love, it doesn't mean that you stop loving someone. They just don't make your heart beat faster.
You don't crave them until you don't know where they end and begin.
I don't know that I ever fall out of love with Ben, But I do know that I fell in love with Arsen along the way...
~Arsen
Mia Asher
***
I was glad he didn't try to come up with something encouraging to say.
Sometimes an understanding silence was better than a bunch of meaningless words.
~ Archer's Voice
Mia Sheridan
***
Once, I thought fear of the dark was the oldest fear of all. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s not the dark that people fear, but what comes in the dark. What exists in it.
~ Dark Matter
Michelle Paver
***
Authors N
***
He wasn’t beautiful, he was terrifying; and then he was beautiful, and then he was both, and I couldn’t decide from one moment to the next which it was.
~ Spinning Silver
Naomi Novik
***
She’d remembered the wrong things, and forgotten too much. She’d remembered how to kill and how to hate, and she’d forgotten how to grow.
~ Uprooted
Naomi Novik
***
..I didn’t need the Dragon to tell me I was going to have to work it out for myself. I swallowed and nodded instead, and then I said, “Thank you—Sarkan.”
His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales.
~ Uprooted
Naomi Novik
***
Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley.
~ Uprooted
Naomi Novik
***
Nothing ever seems interesting when it belongs to you - only when it doesn't.
~ Tuck Everlasting
Natalie Babbitt
***
I gain my freedom on the day the moon loses her daughter, if that occurs in a week when two Mondays come together. I await with patience.
~ Stardust
Neil Gaiman
***
We are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other.
~ The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
Nina Riggs
***
Everything is strange — so unlike anything we have done before—and everything, too, is exactly as we imagined.
~ The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
Nina Riggs
***
..living with a terminal disease is like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss. But that living without disease is also like walking on a tightrope over an insanely scary abyss, only with some fog or cloud cover obscuring the depths a bit more — sometimes the wind blowing it off a little, sometimes a nice dense cover.
~ The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
Nina Riggs
***
Sometimes the most important thing is knowing when to quit. Sometimes being heroic is knowing when to say enough is enough.
~ The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying
Nina Riggs
***
Authors O
***
Ask yourself if the people in your life give you energy and encourage your personal growth, or block that growth with dysfunctional dynamics and outdated scripts. If they don't support you as a loving, open, free, and spontaneous being, good-bye!
Put a stop to the stagnant patterns that no longer serve you.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
What I know for sure: Having the best things is no substitute for having the best life. When you can let go of the desire to acquire, you know you are really on your way.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
What I know for sure is that giving yourself time to just be is essential to fulfilling your mission as a human being.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
Every action, thought and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect. If we participate in the cause, it is not possible for us not to participate in the effect. In this most profound way, we are held responsible for our every action, thought and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention.
— Gary Zukav
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
Spirituality is not religion. You can be spiritual and not have a religious context. The opposite is true, too: You can be very religious with no spiritual dimension, just doctrine.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
Spirit to me is the essence of who we are. It doesn't require any particular belief. It just is. And the key to this essence is simply being aware of the present moment. It's transformative. It redefines what it means to be alive.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
The older I get, the less tolerance I have for pettiness and superficial pursuits. There's a wealth that has nothing to do with dollars, that comes from the perspective and wisdom of paying attention to your life. It has everything to teach you. And what I know for sure is that the joy of learning well is the greatest reward.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
In the best of times and worst of times, I know for sure, this life is a gift. And I believe that no matter where we live or how we look or what we do for a living, when it comes to what really matters - what makes us laugh and cry, grieve and yearn, delight and rejoice - we share the same heart space. We just fill it with different things.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
Being grateful all the time isn't easy. But it's when you feel least thankful that you are most in need of what gratitude can give you: perspective. Gratitude can transform any situation. It alters your vibration, moving you from negative energy to positive. It's the quickest, easiest, most powerful way to effect change in your life - this I know for sure.
...And the more grateful you become, the more you have to be grateful for.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
I know for sure that appreciating whatever shows up for you in life changes your whole world. You radiate and generate more goodness for yourself when you're aware of all you have and not focusing on your have-nots.
I know for sure: If you make time for a little gratitude every day, you'll be amazed by the results.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
Who you're meant to be evolves from where you are right now. So learning to appreciate your lessons, mistakes, and setbacks as stepping-stones to the future is a clear sign you're moving in the right direction.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
**
No matter what challenge you may be facing, you must remember that while the canvas of your life is painted with daily experiences, behaviors, reactions, and emotions, you're the one controlling the brush.... we are all the artists of our own lives - and that we can use as many colors and brushstrokes as we like.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
Balance lives in the present. When you feel the earth moving, bring yourself back to the now. You'll handle whatever shake-up the next moment brings when you get to it. In this moment, you're still breathing. In this moment, you've survived. In this moment, you're finding a way to step onto higher ground.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
I know for sure that healing the wounds of the past is one of the biggest and most worthwhile challenges of life. It's important to know when and how you were programmed, so you can change the program. And doing so is your responsibility, no one else's. There is one irrefutable law of the universe: We are each responsible for our own life.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
**
Everything I do all day, I do in preparation for my reading time. Give me a great novel or memoir, some tea, and a cozy spot to curl up in, and I'm in heaven. I love to live in another person's thoughts: I marvel at the bonds I feel with people who come alive on the page, regardless of how their circumstances might be from mine. I not only feel I know these people, but I also recognize more of myself. Insight, information, knowledge, inspiration, power: All that and more can come through a good book.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
Your journey begins with a choice to get up, step out and live fully.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
What I know for sure is that pleasure is energy reciprocated: What you put out comes back. Your base level of pleasure is determined by how you view your whole life.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
It doesn't take a lot to make me happy because I find satisfaction in so much of what I do.
~ What I Know for Sure
Oprah Winfrey
***
Pushing against the need to forgive is like spreading poison in your veins. Surrender to the hurt, loss, resentment and disappointment. Accept the truth. It did happen and now it's done. Make a decision to meet the pain as it rises within you and allow it to pass right through. Give yourself permission to let go of the past and step out of your history, into the now.
Forgive, and set yourself free.
~ The Wisdom of Sundays
Oprah Winfrey
***
... the true purpose of forgiveness is to stop allowing whatever that person did to affect how I live my life now.
~ The Wisdom of Sundays
Oprah Winfrey
***
Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different. It's accepting the past for what it was and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.
~ The Wisdom of Sundays
Oprah Winfrey
***
You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you and allowing that goodness to emerge.
~ The Wisdom of Sundays
Oprah Winfrey
***
Meaningful things happen when you release the anxious thoughts and negative chatter in your head and tune in to what the person in front of you is saying. Slowing down, showing up, and listening to your child, spouse, parent, or friend shows them they have been seen and heard by you. Not only are you providing validation when they need it most, you are consciously creating your own spiritual practice.
~ The Wisdom of Sundays
Oprah Winfrey
***
An intention is the quality of consciousness that you bring to a deed or words. It's an energy. It's your reason for speaking. It's your motivation that creates consequences.
— Gary Zukav
~ The Wisdom of Sundays
Oprah Winfrey
***
The energy we put out in the world is the energy we get back.
~ The Wisdom of Sundays
Oprah Winfrey
***
The real truths of life are never entirely new to you because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear and then recognize them. Ultimately, it's not new information.
— Eckhart Tolle
~ The Wisdom of Sundays
Oprah Winfrey
***
Your spirit is the part of you that is seeking meaning and purpose. That's one way someone can relate to that. Another way to understand spirit is that it's the part of you that is drawn to hope, that will not give in to despair. The part of you that has to believe in goodness; that has to believe in something more.
— Caroline Myss
~ The Wisdom of Sundays
Oprah Winfrey
***
Authors P
***
Seconds, minutes, hours tick past. Months, years, an eternity...
~ The Last Piece of My Heart
Paige Toon
***
I am not one thing
But many little pieces
Divided but allied
One of these I gave to you
Now part of it has died
Every time you hurt me
Every time you make me cry
That little piece of me you own
Withers up inside
For now it’s still alive
You haven’t lost me yet
But others have
Others have
And that’s something
You should not
Forget.
~ The Last Piece of My Heart
Paige Toon
***
The problem with giving your heart away to someone is that you never fully get it back. Long after you’ve fallen out of love with them, they still own a little piece of you.
~ The Last Piece of My Heart
Paige Toon
***
Her smile faded, her chest tightened, and a heavy blanket of anguish smothered her smallest joy.
~ Esperanza Rising
Pam Muñoz Ryan
***
A noise came from her mouth and slowly, her first breath of grief grew into a tormented cry. She fell to her knees and sank into a dark hole of despair and disbelief.
~ Esperanza Rising
Pam Muñoz Ryan
***
Do not be afraid to start over.
~ Esperanza Rising
Pam Muñoz Ryan
***
When a person dies, their body goes away, but their voice stays. I hear Gram every day. Every day I hear her voice.
~ Lottery
Patricia Wood
***
But if I did not know what I wanted, I had learned something...the physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.
~ When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
***
As a doctor, you have a sense of what it’s like to be sick, but until you’ve gone through it yourself, you don’t really know.
~ When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
***
The fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.
~ When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
***
As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives — everyone dies eventually — but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of death or illness.
~ When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
***
Often, for a life capable of great depth there requires a descent of staggering proportions. Often this follows death of a great love, an illness from which recovery is happening, divorce, or some other unexpected major life event. This often allows the psyche to plunge into the unknown depths that were invisible before.
~ Moods, Emotions, and Aging: Hormones and the Mind-Body Connection
Phyllis J. Bronson and Rebecca Bronson
***
Bioidentical molecules are generally not used in pharmacology because they cannot be patented (a naturally occurring substance cannot be patented, and drug companies "patent" molecules in order to sell drugs).
~ Moods, Emotions, and Aging: Hormones and the Mind-Body Connection
Phyllis J. Bronson and Rebecca Bronson
***
The bottom line for women to know is: synthetic progestins are NOT the same as bioidentical progesterone, and natural progesterone must be used in conjunction with estrogen.
~ Moods, Emotions, and Aging: Hormones and the Mind-Body Connection
Phyllis J. Bronson and Rebecca Bronson
***
Some women seek to numb their wrinkles and have plastic surgery for every flaw. But these therapies are bandages serving only to cover up their aging bodies.
~ Moods, Emotions, and Aging: Hormones and the Mind-Body Connection
Phyllis J. Bronson and Rebecca Bronson
***
Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.
~ Golden Son
Pierce Brown
***
Authors Q
***
***
Authors R
***
Arguing with Hyrek was like arguing with a dead apple tree—fruitless.
~ Fortune's Pawn
Rachel Bach
***
How odd it is, that the dead weigh more than the living. You would think it would be the opposite, but it isn't. I think it is because souls give bodies lightness and air. When the soul leaves, the body has nothing left and is desperate to return to the earth. That's why it's so heavy.
~ The Enchanted
Rene Denfeld
***
.. time is more than counting days. On the outside, people think clocks tell them the time. They set an alarm for work and wake up to a blinking light that says six a.m. They look to an office wall to tell them if it is time to go home.
The truth is, clocks don't tell time. Time is measured in meaning.
I better get up for work or It's time to feed the baby. Or That was the year I got cancer or That is the day we celebrate your birthday. Or Remember when our father died or Let's remember to plant turnips this spring.
It is meaning that drives most people forward into time, and it is meaning that reminds them of the past, so they know where they are in the universe.
When time no longer exists, you don't care about getting up, you don't think about birthdays, you don't think back to people you lost. You float free in the universe, untethered to anyone or anything. Your heart is empty, and because your heart is empty, you have no time. You have no place in the universe.
~ The Enchanted
Rene Denfeld
***
I'm saying hopeful magic. I don't know this inmate. But I imagine he knows magic, if he is reading books. The book itself doesn't matter. It's that he found another world in it.
~ The Enchanted
Rene Denfeld
***
It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
— Dale Carnegie
~ 30 Days to Happiness
Rhonda Sciortino
***
Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn't stop to enjoy it.
— William Feather
~ 30 Days to Happiness
Rhonda Sciortino
***
If you aren't grateful for what you already have, what makes you think you would be happy with more?
— Roy T. Bennett
~ 30 Days to Happiness
Rhonda Sciortino
***
We don’t learn powerful lessons and develop priceless character traits like patience during times of fun and ease; we learn the important character traits, like patience, only through the frustrations of life.
~ 30 Days to Happiness
Rhonda Sciortino
***
If you want to be happy in life, measure, value, and guard your peace.
When you lose your peace, you lose your happiness. It’s that simple.
Authentic peace is internal.
No one can give it to you, and no one can steal it from you, so long as you refuse to allow them to do so.
~ 30 Days to Happiness
Rhonda Sciortino
***
For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
~ 30 Days to Happiness
Rhonda Sciortino
***
In creating your action plan for a truly successful life, take inventory of the things of true value in your life.
~ 30 Days to Happiness
Rhonda Sciortino
***
Genuine happiness isn't found in achievements or in the acquisition of material things.
~ 30 Days to Happiness
Rhonda Sciortino
***
Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.
~ Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bach
***
...one's body being nothing more than thought itself...
~ Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bach
***
To deny our pasts is to burn the bridge we must cross to self-understanding.
~ Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bach
***
It is that to which we cling that drags us to the bottom of the abyss. There is real power in having nothing to lose.
~ The Broken Road
Richard Paul Evans
***
Lack of passion sometimes occurs when our stated goals are incongruent with our inner desires. So the question is, do you believe in what you're doing?
~ The Broken Road
Richard Paul Evans
***
The measure of mental health isn't happiness or sadness, it's appropriateness. If you're happy when something tragic happens, that's not healthy. And vice versa.
~ The Broken Road
Richard Paul Evans
***
The past doesn't leave us, but we can leave it.
What we're really talking about isn't being free from the past, it's being free from the future. It's not the past that enslaves us, it's the future it's connected to.
~ The Broken Road
Richard Paul Evans
***
Sometimes in making our way through life we get ourselves so lost and tangled in the thicket of self-interest that we forget that our self-interest is much more than a flashy car and a fat wallet.
~ The Broken Road
Richard Paul Evans
***
Change is always coming. Nothing is more unchanging than change, just as nothing is more certain than uncertainty.
~ The Broken Road
Richard Paul Evans
***
There's a big difference between us. I write nonfiction, you write Fiction. I write truths that tell lies. You write lies that tell truths.
~ The Broken Road
Richard Paul Evans
***
The cost of love is the risk of losing it. But it's always worth it. After all, in the end, what else is there?
~ Noel Street
Richard Paul Evans
***
Some own up to their past. Some are owned by their past. The wise take what they can from the past and then leave it behind.
~ Noel Street
Richard Paul Evans
***
Life is a ladder. You can choose the direction to climb, but not the rungs. As you climb, you will slip at times. Do not be discouraged. Sometimes success is better measured in intention than inches.
~ The Noel Letters
Richard Paul Evans
***
Too many live their lives as if they'll live on this Earth forever, scheming and building sand empires that will fall at the next wave of time. Ultimately, the only empire worth building is one of the soul, as the heart alone exists outside of time and physics. We all arrived on Earth with a round-trip ticket. We are sojourners and star travelers, all of us - campers from the Great Beyond. While it behooves us to leave the campground better than we found it, we are fools to put down stakes or pour foundation on unclaimable ground.
~ The Noel Letters
Richard Paul Evans
***
Love is the single greatest choice you can make in your life. Make no mistake: Love is a choice. It is not something that happens to you nor a hole you fall into. It is not an accident.
Love is a choice, a decision, that is grown and cultivated, pruned at times and patiently cared for. If properly nourished, it will someday grow into something too big to uproot - something that will provide shade and sustenance, constantly climbing upward and spreading its shelter over others.
If you believe you must earn love, as many do, or require it of others, you do not understand its nature. Love earned ceases to be love. It is wage.
~ The Noel Letters
Richard Paul Evans
***
Many mistake knowledge for wisdom. They are not the same thing. A cupboard full of ingredients is not a meal. It's how knowledge is applied to real life that counts as wisdom.
Do not be over-arrogant in your knowledge. No one is always right, and everyone is sometimes wrong.
~ The Noel Letters
Richard Paul Evans
***
It's been written that "our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter". As you pursue your dreams, remember that when you turn the final page of life, what will matter most to you is only what can be held inside. Life's book is written on the heart.
~ The Noel Letters
Richard Paul Evans
***
The greatest story you will ever write in your life is your own, not with ink but with your daily actions and choices.
~ The Noel Letters
Richard Paul Evans
***
When one door closes, another opens.
~ The Noel Letters
Richard Paul Evans
***
When it rains it pours.
~ The Noel Letters
Richard Paul Evans
***
Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things.
— Kurt Vonnegut
~ The Noel Letters
Richard Paul Evans
***
How much of each relationship is based on reality versus what we hope to believe about who the other person is?
~ The Noel Stranger
Richard Paul Evans
***
It’s an irony that nothing makes you feel more lonely than crowds of people you are not connected to.
~ The Mistletoe Secret
Richard Paul Evans
***
Humans don’t do well alone. But it’s not really solitude that’s the problem—it’s loneliness. The difference between solitude and loneliness is that one exists in the physical world, and the other exists in the heart. A person can be in solitude but not lonely, and vice versa.
~ The Mistletoe Secret
Richard Paul Evans
***
“Books are important things. Books are more than paper and glue and ink. They are more than digital imprints. They are sparks. Sparks that ignite fires. Sparks that ignite revolutions. Every major revolution began with a book.”
~ The Mistletoe Inn
Richard Paul Evans
***
To be in love is something. To be loved is everything.
~ The Mistletoe Inn
Richard Paul Evans
***
The problem with the past is that too often yesterday’s lessons were meant for yesterday’s problems.
~ The Mistletoe Inn
Richard Paul Evans
***
Too many times we lose today’s battles because we’re still engaged in fighting yesterday’s.
~ The Mistletoe Inn
Richard Paul Evans
***
Without dreams, life is a desert.
~ The Mistletoe Inn
Richard Paul Evans
***
For a moment I just looked at her. I was certain that she knew who I was. And i was pretty sure that she knew that I knew that she knew who I was.
~ The Noel Diary
Richard Paul Evans
***
Have you ever wondered if people come into our lives for a reason?
~ The Noel Diary
Richard Paul Evans
***
Even in the worst of times, there had always been something healing about the music of Christmas.
~ The Noel Diary
Richard Paul Evans
***
Light is not found in dark places, and hope is not found looking down or looking back. May you always look up.
~ The Mistletoe Promise
Richard Paul Evans
***
It’s been said that the truth will set you free. But the truth can also bury you. It’s not the hurricane that breaks your heart, it’s the phone call afterward informing you that all is lost.
~ The Mistletoe Promise
Richard Paul Evans
***
Everyone has a dark and light side. How much we see of either is usually less a matter of the moon’s position than where we’re standing.
~ The Mistletoe Promise
Richard Paul Evans
***
Often what we see clearest in others is what we most avoid seeing in ourselves.
~ The Mistletoe Promise
Richard Paul Evans
***
I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me.
~ The Mistletoe Promise
Richard Paul Evans
***
Oftentimes it's the smallest, seemingly inconsequential acts that make the biggest differences in our lives.
~ A Winter Dream
Richard Paul Evans
***
My mind was reeling. Finally, everything made sense. And nothing did.
~ A Winter Dream
Richard Paul Evans
***
Is it wisdom to search out what will hurt us most? Is painful truth better than ignorant bliss?
~ A Winter Dream
Richard Paul Evans
***
The greatest falls - of towers and hearts - happen when beliefs are built upon assumptions.
~ A Winter Dream
Richard Paul Evans
***
In life we all take different paths, some more difficult than others, but in the end, all that matters is whether or not they lead us home.
~ Lost December
Richard Paul Evans
***
The pages continue to turn, and every day I’m a little older, hopefully a little wiser and a lot more grateful.
~ Lost December
Richard Paul Evans
***
I feel as excited as a child on Christmas morning — and probably for many of the same reasons.
~ Lost December
Richard Paul Evans
***
I have learned that if you have something to eat, a roof overhead and clean water, you should be most grateful — you number among the world’s most blessed.
~ Lost December
Richard Paul Evans
***
On the calendar, all days look the same, but they do not carry the same weight.
~ Lost December
Richard Paul Evans
***
It has been said that sometimes the greatest hope in our lives is just a second chance to do what we should have done right in the first place.
~ Lost December
Richard Paul Evans
***
If you have someone to love, you are lucky. If they love you back, you're blessed. And if you waste the time you have to love them, you're a fool.
~ The Christmas List
Richard Paul Evans
***
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. That way he can't do anything to you because you're a mile away and you've got his shoes.
~ The Christmas List
Richard Paul Evans
***
The best they have is an educated guess. I’m not guessing, I’ve read the last page. I know how the story ends. Promise me you will do exactly what I say.
~ Promise Me
Richard Paul Evans
***
I suppose that the simplest of things, when facing extinction, become of utmost worth.
~ Promise Me
Richard Paul Evans
***
If history teaches us anything, it's that anything is possible and the unlikely is likely.
~ Promise Me
Richard Paul Evans
***
Locked away in jewelry boxes, hidden in my closet, are two necklaces. They are gifts from two different men. Both of these necklaces are beautiful, both of them are valuable and I wear neither of them, but for entirely different reasons—one because of a promise broken, the other because of a promise kept.
As you read my story, there is something I want you to understand. That in spite of all the pain—past, present and that still to come—I wouldn’t have done anything differently. Nor would I trade the time I had with him for anything—except for what, in the end, I traded it for.
~ Promise Me
Richard Paul Evans
***
For though it appears empty, to me it contains all that Christmas is made of, the root of all wonder in a child's eyes, and the source of the magic of Christmases for centuries to come.
~ The Christmas Box
Richard Paul Evans
***
They say that time heals all wounds. But even as wounds heal they leave scars, token reminders of the pain.
~ The Christmas Box
Richard Paul Evans
***
The human life cycle no less than evolves around the box; from the open-topped box called a bassinet, to the pine box we call a coffin, the box is our past and, just as assuredly, our future.
~ The Christmas Box
Richard Paul Evans
***
Whatever the truth about the origin of the box's magic, it is the emptiness of the box that I will treasure most, and the memory of the Christmas season when the Christmas Box found me.
~ The Christmas Box
Richard Paul Evans
***
Our thoughts are not arrows haphazardly shot out into the cosmos. They are boomerangs.
~ The Gift
Richard Paul Evans
***
Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.
~ The Gift
Richard Paul Evans
***
The most important story we will ever write in life is our own - not with ink, but with our daily choices.
~ The Gift
Richard Paul Evans
***
Overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?
~ Walking on Water
Richard Paul Evans
***
To deny our pasts is to burn the bridge we must cross to self-understanding.
~ Walking on Water
Richard Paul Evans
***
It's good to take counsel from the past but not to be ruled by it. Otherwise we end up using today to fight yesterday's battles and miss tomorrow's promise.
~ Walking on Water
Richard Paul Evans
***
Life is not a sprint.
It was never meant to be.
It is just one step of faith after another.
~ A Step of Faith
Richard Paul Evans
***
In the beginning, I had considered these stops on my journey as interruptions - but I'm coming to understand that perhaps these detours are my journey.
~ A Step of Faith
Richard Paul Evans
***
Sometimes we can only find ourselves by first losing ourselves.
~ A Step of Faith
Richard Paul Evans
***
The gifts of the Spirit are the fruit of the tree of faith.
The gift of tongues, healings and miracles are the blessings of faith.
We live in an age of unbelief, but I promise you, miracles still abound.
~ A Step of Faith
Richard Paul Evans
***
Once you have opened the book to another's life, the cover never looks the same.
~ The Road to Grace
Richard Paul Evans
***
I was lonely but not alone - my companions were despair, loneliness, and fear. And they were a talkative bunch.
~ Miles to Go
Richard Paul Evans
***
Unsettled Seattler unsettles the settled.
~ The Walk
Richard Paul Evans
***
Most people are trapped in their towns, or their jobs, or their way of life.
We go through life in our little boxes until we find ourselves in the
last one, buried in the ground.”
~ Alone
Robert J. Crane
***
It's the kind of bookstore to which I go when I want a specific book, but also when I don't know what I want, or when there's nothing I want, in particular, except to be in a bookstore.
— Francine Prose
~ My Bookstore
Ronald Rice
***
...reading is a simple addiction, curable only by death - ours, or the world's.
— Edith Pearlman
~ My Bookstore
Ronald Rice
***
A flyleaf is that blank piece of paper at beginning and ending of a real hold in your hand and turn the pages book. That blank page is like a curtain rising, the promise of what is to come, and at end, it is the curtain closing, that collected pause before you face the slow return to the outer world.
— Jill McCorkle
~ My Bookstore
Ronald Rice
***
The owner of Next Chapter Bookshop had been holding my hand on a road to publication that had been fraught with potholes.
— Lesley Kagen
~ My Bookstore
Ronald Rice
***
A bookstore is, at its heart, like any of the novels you may choose to buy in it. The shop itself is just the title page - you can find any work you want, after all, in many other places - and its holdings are the table of contents, the portal to the real experience. What ultimately makes the place sing, and live in you forever, is something else, much deeper: the characters you meet in it, the emotions that arise in you there, the sense of patterning - and being without pattern - that turns the story of a bookstore into the story of a life.
— Pico Iyer
~ My Bookstore
Ronald Rice
***
There are many reasons I love books: for the worlds they show me, for the things they teach me, for the way they feel in my hands or in my satchel, for the way they look decorating my house, for the questions they arouse from my children, for their mystery, for their cold or warm truths, for their lies, for their promise. But mostly I just love being transported to some place outside of my everyday life.
— Peter Geye
~ My Bookstore
Ronald Rice
***
In time, I gained enough sense to realize that writing was not about publishing, but about reading and seeing and thinking and listening and developing a sense of one's self. And, yes, about putting words on paper.
— Kathleen Finneran
~ My Bookstore
Ronald Rice
***
Statisticians may tell you that people cluster around jobs or transit or high-speed Internet, but some of us cluster around more important things. Like bookstores.
— Jon Clinch
~ My Bookstore
Ronald Rice
***
I still own books that have remained alive and dear in my thoughts since I was a boy, and a part of the life of each one is my memory of the bookstore where I bought it and of the bookseller who sold it to me.
— Wendell Berry
~ My Bookstore
Ronald Rice
***
The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exist but doesn't now, then where did it go?
~ A Tale For the Time Being
Ruth Ozeki
***
Authors S
***
Once you’ve been in a position to watch everyone you’ve ever known die, the light go slowly out of their eyes, transforming them from this magic assemblage of quirks, habits, preferences, and dreams to an inert pile of spent flesh and bone, you realize not only that life is precious but also that death is absolutely inevitable. No matter what you do. The people you love will die one day, and sometimes it happens sooner and faster and more horribly than you could imagine. Sometimes it’s even your fault.
~ Dead Silence
S. A. Barnes
***
He knocks back the last of the bourbon.
The sound the empty glass makes when he sets it down on the table has a ring of finality to it — a decision’s been made.
~ Cursed
S. J. Harper
***
He continues dipping onion rings in ketchup as if that stalling tactic is going to work.
Persistence is my middle name.
I fix him with a laser beam stare.
~ Cursed
S. J. Harper
***
The look of shocked surprise on his face is magnificent. I want to commission a portrait artist to capture it in oils, so I can pass it down to future generations. It. Is. Priceless.
~ The Hating Game
Sally Thorne
***
We’re evenly matched, but we are completely at odds.
~ The Hating Game
Sally Thorne
***
The pieces rearrange in my head, like a puzzle that had been put together wrong.
~ My Lovely Wife
Samantha Downing
***
And that’s one of the reasons why I’m taking a chance on him.
He doesn’t put me inside a padded box to protect me.
He gives me my freedom.
He lets me be me.
~ The Shattered Dark
Sandy Williams
***
There was no going back after that. There was nothing to do but let those words sweep them through the years and land them solidly back in the present, older, wiser, different.
~ Lost Lake
Sarah Addison Allen
***
You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.
~ Walk Two Moons
Sharon Creech
***
Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to go away before your head can figure it out.
~ Walk Two Moons
Sharon Creech
***
In the course of a lifetime, what does it matter?
~ Walk Two Moons
Sharon Creech
***
We occasionally have Amazon orders returned because the recipient has discovered notes in a book, scribbled by previous readers, which we had not spotted. To me these things do not detract but are captivating additions – a glimpse into the mind of another person who has read the same book.
~ The Diary of a Bookseller
Shaun Bythell
***
She has a capacity for talking that I am quite convinced is unparalleled in the world, and she abhors a silence the way that nature abhors a vacuum.
~ The Diary of a Bookseller
Shaun Bythell
***
The moment she opens her mouth a gem of some sort will emerge, fully formed.
~ The Diary of a Bookseller
Shaun Bythell
***
Going through the books of the person who has died affords an insight into who that person was, their interests and, to a degree, their personality.
~ The Diary of a Bookseller
Shaun Bythell
***
The more knowledge we have about the realities of lethal illness, the more sensible we can be about choosing the time to stop or the time to fight on, and the less we expect the kind of death most of us will not have.
For those who die and those who love them, a realistic expectation is the surest path to tranquillity. When we mourn, it should be the loss of love that makes us grieve, not the guilt that we did something wrong.
~ How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
Sherwin B. Nuland
***
When I have a major illness requiring highly specialized treatment, I will seek out a doctor skilled in its provision. But I will not expect of him that he understand my values, my expectations for myself and those I love, my spiritual nature, or my philosophy of life. That is not what he is trained for and that is not what he will be good at. It is not what drives those engines of his excellence.
For those reasons, I will not allow a specialist to decide when to let go. I will choose my own way, or at least make the elements of my own way so clear that the choice, should I be unable, can be made by those who know me best. The conditions of my illness may not permit me to “die well” or with any of the dignity we so optimistically seek, but within the limits of my ability to control, I will not die later than I should simply for the senseless reason that a highly skilled technological physician does not understand who I am.
~ How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
Sherwin B. Nuland
***
Though biomedical science has vastly increased mankind’s average life expectancy, the maximum has not changed in veriflable recorded history.
~ How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
Sherwin B. Nuland
***
Death may be due to a wide variety of diseases and disorders, but in every case the underlying physiological cause is a breakdown in the body’s oxygen cycle.
~ Dr. Milton Helpern
Chief Medical Examiner of New York City, 1954-1974
~ How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
Sherwin B. Nuland
***
With what strife and pains we come into the world we know not, but ‘tis commonly no easy matter to get out of it.
~ Religio Medici
Thomas Browne
~ How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
Sherwin B. Nuland
***
..when the human spirit departs, it takes with it the vital stuffing of life. Then, only the inanimate corpus remains, which is the least of all the things that make us human.
~ How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter
Sherwin B. Nuland
***
He was an excellent storyteller; he had a talent for building his tale, giving just enough detail and leaving just enough suspense to keep his audience interested.
~ The Haunting of Maddy Clare
Simone St. James
***
Shopping anywhere is great—but the advantages of doing it abroad are:
1. You can buy things you can't get in Britain.
2. You can name-drop when you get back home.
3. Foreign money doesn't count, so you can spend as much as you like.
~ Shopaholic Abroad / Shopaholic Takes Manhattan
Sophie Kinsella
***
You try to keep life simple but it never works, and in the end all you have left is yourself.
~ A is for Alibi
Sue Grafton
***
Time had shredded the facts like a big machine, leaving only slender paper threads with which to reconstruct reality.
~ A is for Alibi
Sue Grafton
***
We are, in the end, a sum of our parts, and when the body fails, all the virtues we hold dear go with it.
~ Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
Susannah Cahalan
***
Understanding dawned on his face, followed by surprise and a chaser of amusement.
~ Elysian Fields
Suzanne Johnson
***
I was frozen between my desire to escape today’s hard truths and a hunger to take the comfort he offered.
~ Royal Street
Suzanne Johnson
***
Body of an Adonis, brain of an anchovy.
~ Royal Street
Suzanne Johnson
***
He might be delighted to see me again, but I was two steps shy of panicked.
~ Royal Street
Suzanne Johnson
***
Regret is a tough emotion to live with, impossible to move on from, because what's done is done.
~ In an Instant
Suzanne Redfearn
***
Authors T
***
We are who we are not because of our birthright, but because of what we choose to do in this life. It cannot be boiled down to black and white. Not when there is so much in between. You cannot say something is moral or immoral without understanding the nuances behind it.
~ The House in the Cerulean Sea
T. J. Klune
***
There are moments in your life, moments when chances have to be taken. It’s scary because there is always the possibility of failure.
~ The House in the Cerulean Sea
T. J. Klune
***
There are mysteries that may never be solved, no matter how hard we try. And if we spend too long trying to solve them, we may miss what’s right in front of us.
~ The House in the Cerulean Sea
T. J. Klune
***
Here is what I can tell you. All that matters in this life is that you try. All that matters is that you open your heart, give everything you have, and keep trying.
~ After I Do
Taylor Jenkins Reid
***
Rachel and I sit down on either side of Grandma. She looks tired. Not the sort of tired after you’ve run a race or the sort of tired after you haven’t slept. She looks the sort of tired that you might be after living so long on this earth.
~ After I Do
Taylor Jenkins Reid
***
His handwriting is so childish. Men’s handwriting is rarely identifiable by any sense of masculinity. It’s only identifiable by the lack of sophistication. They must decide in sixth grade to start worrying about other things.
~ After I Do
Taylor Jenkins Reid
***
It will be OK because everything is OK in the end. And if it’s not OK, it’s not the end.
~ After I Do
Taylor Jenkins Reid
***
He is next to me but not beside me. We are both in this bed, but we are not sharing it.
~ After I Do
Taylor Jenkins Reid
***
I thought of all those people I had seen making their way down the mountain. They seemed victorious. As I started to turn down the mountain, I knew that I would seem victorious to all the people I would pass on the way down. It just goes to show how alike failure and success can appear. Sometimes only you know the truth.
~ After I Do
Taylor Jenkins Reid
***
Most of the books that I have in my library are unread. A lot of them are almost like pieces of art, sort of tactile - I pick them up, touch them and look at them, and get vibrations from them. The fact that I can eventually read them and glean their content is an added bonus.
— Thurston Moore
~ My Ideal Bookshelf
Thessaly La Force
***
Books are the very best kind of decoration, really. There are two types of books, the ones you read and the ones you have on your coffee table. Both make a space feel like home - you spend time with them, they have meaning for you, and they actually look good, too.
To me, nothing is more beautiful than a wall of books.
— Tom Delavan
~ My Ideal Bookshelf
Thessaly La Force
***
The world becomes more rewarding if you let yourself look beyond what you're searching for.
— Candy Chang
~ My Ideal Bookshelf
Thessaly La Force
***
I think books find their way to you when you need them. Whenever I feel like I'm not going to live to read all the books I want to read, I remind myself that the important ones find their way to me.
— Rosanne Cash
~ My Ideal Bookshelf
Thessaly La Force
***
Sometimes books can have a tremendously helpful effect on a writer. While reading Tom Drury's The End of Vandalism, for example, I felt something shift in my approach to my own work. Good literature is a collaboration between reader and writer, and that book, in a moment of dialogue, taught me a lesson about allowing the reader to meet me halfway.
— Jo Ann Beard
~ My Ideal Bookshelf
Thessaly La Force
***
We're all still hunting, still hoping to discover one more book that we'll love and treasure for the rest of our lives.
~ My Ideal Bookshelf
Thessaly La Force
***
Words had magic, they had power – the power to heal, to hurt, to make things happen.
~ The Little Village Bakery
Tilly Tennant
***
The blueprint of our life and the lives of our children are determined by daily habits. That's how important habits are. If you want to change your life you must change your daily habits.
~ Change Your Habits, Change Your Life
Tom Corley
***
If it was just a matter of travelling back to the past, anyone could do it. But this cafe chooses people . . . By its rules . . . And some people hear those rules and give up. But those people who are resolved to go back, despite the rules, have a reason for doing so. It doesn’t matter what that reason is. If there is someone they must see, or someone they should see . . . even if the present reality won’t change . . . then, that’s all that matters.
~ Before Your Memory Fades
Toshikazu Kawaguchi
***
Authors U
***
***
Authors V
***
Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically.
As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
~ Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
***
Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
~ Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
***
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
~ Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov
***
Authors W
***
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
~ Lord of the Flies
William Golding
***
The absence of evidence is precisely that: an absence of evidence.
~ Defending Jacob
William Landay
***
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
~ Defending Jacob
William Landay
***
A good marriage drags a long tail of memory behind it. A single word or gesture, a tone of voice can conjure up so many remembrances.
~ Defending Jacob
William Landay
***
Authors X
***
《无论是你的一辈子，还是我的一辈子》page 654
阮南烛沉默片刻，缓缓开口：“我第一次独自进门的时候很害怕。” 他似乎觉得有些好笑，“怕得要死，不过怕也没用，身边的人总不能带我一辈子……林秋石。 ” 他叫了林秋石的名字。
林秋石看向了他的眼睛，两人视线相触，林秋石听到了阮南烛轻声开口。
他的语气很淡，却带着股执拗的味道：“但如果你愿意，如果愿意——我可以护你一辈子，无论是你的一辈子，还是我的一辈子。”
~ Kaleidoscope of Death (Like a Dream book 2) |《死亡万花筒》入梦【下】
Xi Zi Xu | 西子绪
***
《光芒》page 585
林秋石想，人也是生物的一种吧，在黑暗的夜色里，看见光芒总会想要朝着那里走去。不去思考光芒的尽头到底有着什么。
~ Kaleidoscope of Death (Like a Dream book 2) |《死亡万花筒》入梦【下】
Xi Zi Xu | 西子绪
***
《成仙》page 456
门外世界熬夜叫作修仙，门内世界熬个夜可能第二天直接就成仙了，根本不用修，一步到位很是省事。
~ Kaleidoscope of Death (Like a Dream book 2) |《死亡万花筒》入梦【下】
Xi Zi Xu | 西子绪
***
《字面上的意思》page 372, 448, 625
page 372
“我们在调查关于你们班级的事。” 阮南烛开门见山，直接拿出了他们从档案馆里找到的那张照片，“我们想问，照片里少的那个人叫什么名字？”
他把照片拿出来，江信鸿只看了一眼就脸色大变：“你们从哪里找到这东西的？”
阮南烛挑眉：“这照片很特别？”
江信鸿没吭声，但林秋石却从他的眼睛深处看到了一种恐惧，仿佛眼前的照片不是照片，而是什么索命的怪物。只见他重重地吞咽着口水，声音里带着颤抖：“我不知道你们什么意思。”
“字面上的意思。” 黎东源突然开口，他的语气非常冷静，“我们也不是要为难你，只是想问清楚照片上到底少了谁，她的名字到底是什么？”
page 448
“在第一扇门的时候我就发现了。” 阮南烛说，“林秋石，你其实……很适合这里。”
林秋石挑眉：“什么意思？”
阮南烛：“字面上的意思，你的适应能力非常好。” 甚至可以说好过头了，在阮南烛出去调查到林秋石的的确确是第一次进门之后，便知道林秋石是个和门内世界很契合的人，想找到这样的人，并不是件容易的事。
page 625
阮南烛歪了歪头：“你们是亲兄妹吗？”
“是啊，怎么了？” 罗千山笑了笑，“不像？”
阮南烛：“不像。”
罗千水皱眉：“我和我哥哪里不像了……”
她话还没说完，便听到阮南烛轻飘飘地来了句：“活人和死人哪里像了？”
空气仿佛瞬间凝固了，罗千水愕然瞪着眸子，而罗千山的眼睛却如暮色一般沉了下来，他说：“你什么意思？”
“字面上的意思。” 阮南烛说，“你妹妹是在第几扇门死的？”
~ Kaleidoscope of Death (Like a Dream book 2) |《死亡万花筒》入梦【下】
Xi Zi Xu | 西子绪
***
《字面上的意思》page 48, 82, 179, 271, 311, 313
page 48
“自然是填井了。” 木匠说，“选个晚上，把死物往井里一放，就成了。”
“死物？什么死物？” 小柯感觉不妙，语气一下重了许多，“您这话是什么意思？”
木匠说：“字面上的意思。”
page 82
阮南烛道：“你快死了。”
林秋石愣住了：“啊？什么意思？”
“字面上的意思。” 阮南烛慢慢地说下去，“不过只要你能撑过十二扇门，就能活下来，彻底脱离门的控制。”
page 179
“南烛，有事吗？” 林秋石擦着头发走了过去。
“我需要你。” 阮南烛语出惊人。
林秋石听到这句话愣了：“什么……意思？”
“字面上的意思。” 阮南烛说，“你不能死。”
page 271
那是个早晨，林秋石照例到楼下吃早饭，却没看见张冕。他等了一会儿，却见大家都是一副什么都没发生的表情， 他很好奇：“张冕呢？怎么没看到他？”
“昨晚就跑了。” 陈非啃着程一榭做的松饼，随口说了句。
“跑了？” 林秋石惊了，“跑了是什么意思？” 他们这儿又不是传销组织，什么叫跑了。
陈非说：“字面上的意思，受不了阮哥的压榨，溜了。”
page 311
直到回到了他们的房间，阮南烛才说了句：“我怀疑有内鬼。“
“什么意思？” 林秋石道。
阮南烛说：“字面上的意思，团队里有人故意杀人。”
page 313
阮南烛说：“那个希望我们死的人，用了新的画框。” 他笑了笑，“好在现在已经解决了。”
林秋石：“什么意思？”
阮南烛：“字面上的意思，还有，我发现了一张的新的纸条。”
~ Kaleidoscope of Death (Like a Dream book 1) |《死亡万花筒》入梦【上】
Xi Zi Xu | 西子绪
***
《有的人，天生就是为门而生的。》page 179
酒足饭饱之后，大家各自散去，林秋石也回了自己的房间，洗了个热水澡，再出来时，却看见阮南烛坐在他的床上等着他。
“南烛，有事吗？” 林秋石擦着头发走了过去。
“我需要你。” 阮南烛语出惊人。
林秋石听到这句话愣了：“什么……意思？”
“字面上的意思。” 阮南烛说，“你不能死。”
林秋石完全没有多想什么，他道：“可以说得更清楚一些吗？”
阮南烛最后只说了一句话，他说：“有的人，天生就是为门而生的。”
他说完这话，便离开了，留下一脸茫然的林秋石。
~ Kaleidoscope of Death (Like a Dream book 1) |《死亡万花筒》入梦【上】
Xi Zi Xu | 西子绪
***
《新生》page 172
“我早就说过，门不是惩罚，而是奖励。” 阮南烛说，“必死之人进入门里，只要通过了十二扇门，就能获得新生。”
~ Kaleidoscope of Death (Like a Dream book 1) |《死亡万花筒》入梦【上】
Xi Zi Xu | 西子绪
***
《欢迎来到门的世界》page 77
光明再次笼罩了整个屋子，也驱散了黑暗带来的未知和恐惧，林秋石终于能清楚的看到眼前人了。
男人的模样比他想象中的还要好看，但也是陌生的，两人眼神相接，大约是看出了林秋石目光中的警惕和隐隐的恐慌，男人又笑了，他对着林秋石伸出手，语调温和：“欢迎来到门的世界。”
~ Kaleidoscope of Death (Like a Dream book 1) |《死亡万花筒》入梦【上】
Xi Zi Xu | 西子绪
***
Authors Y
***
***
Authors Z
***
I swear in that moment I watched the light dim in her eyes, like the last flicker of a torch with an exhausted battery.
~ Killer Instinct
Zoë Sharp
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***
Nothing ever looked or felt the same. It was an appointment with disappointment.
***
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.
***
People only live as long as someone remembers them,
***
They say funerals are not for the dead but for the living. Those rites are what permit you to move on, so if you don’t deal with the remains, you can never deal with the memories.
***
Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter for the other.
Now you will feel no cold, for each of you will be warmth for the other.
Now there will be no loneliness, for each of you will be companion to the other.
Now you are two persons, but there are three lives before you: His life, Her life, and Your life together.
***
Two is a coincidence. Three is a pattern.
***
Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern.
***
My heart stalled, my breath catching. Falin.
As if trying to make up for that lost beat, my pulse sped up, my heart fluttering in an attempt to escape my chest.
~ Alex Craft series
Kalayna Price
***
I remembered something he said, years ago. “Sometimes when you met someone, there’s a click. I don’t believe in love at first sight but I believe in that click. Recognition”. He’d kissed me then and whispered: “Click”.
***
His hands jerked. I’d struck a nerve.
Good.
My own nerves were well frayed. I wanted to share the wealth.
***
His ghost of a smile flickered over his lips.
***
Some people awoke to escape their nightmares.
I awoke into one.
***
The game was set and the pieces were moving, and there was nothing to do now but see how it finished out. I had my own moves to make.
***
His features were elegant without appearing weak, beautiful without sacrificing one bit of masculinity.
***
The vague feeling of unease matured into full-blown dread in her chest.
***
Fear sank through me like an anchor to the seafloor, pinning me to the spot where I stood.
***
Marc’s world was defined by bold streaks of black and white, and mine was consumed by shades of gray. He saw good and bad, but all too often, I saw only the lesser of two evils.
~ Shifters series
Rachel Vincent
***
That horrible feeling of dread still clung to the recesses of my mind like sticky cobwebs.
***
A sudden awareness sent chills up my spine, and neither it nor the goose bumps sprouting on my flesh were due to the mid-November cold.
***
His disbelief sent a fresh surge of irritation through me.
***
Each new line that appeared around his eyes and each gray hair that grew at his temple reminded me that he was just as susceptible as the rest of us to the devastation of time, the wear and tear of constant use.
***
Fresh irritation swelled in my chest like heartburn, bringing with it the first twinges of a migraine behind my right eye.
***
Now the only part of my “name” remaining was a familiar note in the hollow echo of his laughter.
***
Disappointment drained from his features with alarming speed, replaced with anger, very very familiar anger.
***
You can’t expect us to remain the same anymore than you can expect time to stand still. You either adjust to the changes and move along with the times, or you get left behind. So which is it going to be? Are you going to let us evolve, or are you going to leave us behind?
***
He turned from the window to look at me, a ghost of a smile haunting the corners of his mouth.
***
My chin dropped into the cradle of my cleavage.
Seriously, I nearly dislocated my jaw.
***
My father’s face was expressionless, his mouth a firm, straight line. But his eyes reflected the ghosts of more painful memories than I could possibly guess at.
***
I finally just turned the set off and went to bed for a restless sleep, disturbed by dreams bordering on nightmares.
***
Under a crisp blue June sky, it was just a melancholy, depressing place. But when day turned to night, melancholy turned to menace. Shadows lengthened and the gray deepened, hiding anger and calling fear. And two young men called it home.
***
Time stopped.
The floor dropped down from under my feet and I floated, disconnected, seeing only him.
***
The rock in my chest cracked into sharp pieces. Thinking about letting him go hurt. But then he wasn’t mine to let go in the first place.
***
A tiny sound popped in my ears, and I had the absurb idea that it was my heart forming hairline cracks.
***
My stomach sank. All traces of fatigue fled, burned in a flood of adrenaline.
***
I’d believed him. He was supposed to be different, to be more.
He’d made me hope for things I didn’t think I’d ever get.
When hope broke, it hurt.
Mine was a very big, very desperate hope, and it hurt like a sonovabitch.
***
I holed up in my office as much as I could, seeking solitude and my own dark thoughts.
***
Yes, my life was a never-ending spiral, doomed to repeat the same patterns of annoying immortal threats – and miserable romantic situations.
~ Succubus Shadows
Richelle Mead
***
Allowing myself to drink in the beauty of the surroundings.
***
Drowning in a sea of confusion and fear.
***
And then, thankfully, he was gone, leaving the scent of CK1 and laundry starch in his wake.
***
The thought sent a shiver up my spine, and I shook it away.
***
A morsel of advice.
Advice I was getting great huge gobs of of late.
***
Her frown disappeared as her brows shot upward in a look of horror.
***
The next thought, riding a sea of embarrassment, washed over me with the speed of a tidal wave.
***
I jerked away from Roman, breaking his hold on me. His expression registered surprise, immediately replaced by sudden understanding. Those beautiful eyes sparkling dangerously, he laughed. “Took you long enough.”
~ Succubus Blues
Richelle Mead
***
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