Just So Quotable!

Just So Quotable!

• May 7, 2012

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a new topic/Top Ten list and invite everyone to share their own answers. I'm so obsessed with lists!

I've got to warn you - this week's topic is absolutely, 100% my favorite one so far. "Top Ten Favorite Quotes from Books" was made for me.

I have a confession: I'm a quote hoarder.

I have notebooks full of favorite quotes, and I always write down at least one from every book I read. If you visit here with any regularity you'll notice that I include a quote with every book review. I also have a Sunday feature I call "So Quotable" where I post a favorite quote and image. When I let Jamie know about my quote obsession and excitement (and anxiety, only TEN?!) about this topic, I found out that she has quote notebooks, too. How awesome is that?!

That leads me to another confession: there are sixteen quotes on this list. Oops! I even separated them into three themes: life, reading and love. With a bonus heartbreak quote.

Without further ado, I present to you:

Top Ten Sixteen Favorite Quotes from Books

Source

A Life Worth Living

“Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.” 

― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. 

That's who we really are.” 

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“It's not what the world holds for you. It's what you bring to it.” 

― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“All her knowledge is gone now. Everything she ever learned, or heard, or saw. Her particular way of looking at Hamlet or daisies or thinking about love, all her private intricate thoughts, her inconsequential secret musings – they’re gone too. I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I’m watching it burn right to the ground.” 

― Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere

"I'm always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty and I wonder how the same can be both."
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Source

Her Nose in a Book

“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.” 

― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.” 

― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”

 ― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” 

― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird 

"Even when she was old enough to read herself, they still tackled the classics together, moving from Anna Karenina to Pride and Prejudice to The Grapes of Wrath as if traveling across the globe itself, leaving holes in the bookshelves like missing teeth. And later, when it started to become clear that she cared more about soccer practice and phone privileges than Jane Austen or Walt Whitman, when the hour turned into a half hour and every night turned into every other, it no longer matter. The stories had become a part of her by then; they stuck to her bones like a good meal, bloomed inside of her like a garden. They were as deep and meaningful as any other trait Dad had passed along to her: her blue eyes, her straw-colored hair, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose." 

― Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

Source

So This Is Love

"Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all." 

― Emily Giffin, Love the One You're With

“It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.” 

― E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. 

It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.” 

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, 

and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.” 

― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“Five years ago, I said vows. And I believe in vows. I meant them, and not just when I said them out loud for an audience to hear but as a motto and a life choice. For as long as we both shall live. I hadn't anticipated the sandy flow of feeling, the yin-yang of love and dread, or the residual buildup of grievances and the slow draining of the benefit of doubt. In good times and in bad. Yes, sure, but in my naivete, I interpreted this as external; we would support each other when the world imposed and intruded. No one tells you that it's the internal that's the real challenge: those moments of decisiveness equal to taking a vow, when you feel the clawing grip of your promises.” 

― Julie Buxbaum, After You

Source

Can't Stop Missing You

“I miss the way he used to kiss my shoulder whenever it was bare and he was nearby. I miss how he cleared his throat before he took a sip of water and scratched his left arm with his right hand when he was nervous. I miss how he tucked my hair behind my ear when it came loose and took my temperature when I was sick or when he was bored. I miss his glasses on my nightstand. I miss watching him take Sunday afternoon naps on my couch, with the newspaper resting on his stomach like a blanket. How his hands stayed clasped, fingers intertwined, while he slept. I miss the cadence of his speech and the stupidity of his puns. I miss playing doctor when we made love, and even when we didn't. I miss his smell, like fresh laundry and honey (because of his shampoo) at his place. Fresh laundry and coconut (because of my shampoo) at mine. I miss that he used to force me to listen to French rap and would sing along in a horrible accent. I miss that he always said "I love you" when he hung up the phone with his sister, never shy or embarassed, regardless of who else was around. I miss that his ideal Friday night included a DVD, eating Chinese food right out of the carton, and cuddling on top of my duvet cover. I miss that he reread books from his childhood and then from mine. I miss that he was the only man that I have ever farted on, and with, freely. I miss that he understood that the holidays were hard for me and that he wanted me to never feel lonely.” 

― Julie Buxbaum, The Opposite of Love