Mass Quotes #9
Features quotes from: Paper Towns by John Green; Waving Not Drowning by Stevie Smith; Fruits Basket Vol 21; Looking for Alaska by John Green; A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
(consider those your spoiler warnings)
——
And I felt the unbroken line of me and of her stretching back from our cribs to the dead guy to acquaintanceship to now. And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn’t planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together–but that seemed too cheesy to say, and anyway, she was standing up.
-John Green, Paper Towns
Standing before this building, I learn something about fear. I learn it is not the idle fantasies of someone who maybe wants something important to happen to him, even if the important thing is horrible. It is not the disgust of seeing a dead stranger, and not the breathlessness of hearing a shotgun pumped outside of Becca Arrington’s house. This cannot be addressed by breathing exercises. This fear bears no analogy to any fear I knew before. This is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before we existed, before this building existed, before the earth existed. this is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead.
The smell leaves me seized by desperate panic–panic not like my lungs are out of air, but like the atmosphere itself is out of air. I think maybe the reason I have spent most of my life being afraid is that I have been trying to prepare myself, to train my body for the real fear when it comes. But I am not prepared.
-John Green, Paper Towns
—–
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much farther out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And now waving, but drowning.
-Stevie Smith, Not Waving, but Drowning
—–
If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.
-Ray Bradbury
Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.
-Carol Burnett
Always be a first rate version of yourself, and not a second rate version of someone else.
-Judy Garland
“I wish I could have lived my life without making any wrong turns. But that’s impossible. A path like that doesn’t exist. We fail. We trip. We get lost. We make mistakes. And little by little, one step at a time, we push forward. It’s all we can do.”
-Kyo, Natsuki Takaya, Fruits Basket Vol 21
The other big difference, I would argue, is that lies are attempts to hide the truth by willfully denying facts. Fiction, on the other hand, is an attempt to reveal the truth by ignoring facts.
-John Green
“That’s the mystery, isn’t it? Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape–the world or the end of it?”
-Alaska, John Green, Looking for Alaska
“I must talk and you must listen, for we are engaged here in the most important pursuit in history: the search for meaning. What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we come to be, and what will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules of this game, and how might we best play it?”
-Dr. Hyde, John Green, Looking for Alaska
“Everything that comes together falls apart,” the Old Man said. “Everything. the chair I’m sitting on. It was built, and so it will fall apart. I’m gonna fall apart, probably before this chair. And you’re gonna fall apart. The cells and organs and systems that make you you–they came together, grew together, and so must fall apart. The Buddha knew one thing science didn’t prove for millennia after his death: Entropy increases. Things fall apart.”
-John Green, Looking for Alaska
She was whizzed into nothingness again, and nothingness was wonderful. She did not mind that she could not feel Calvin’s hand, that she could not see or feel or be. The relief from the intolerable pressure was all she needed.
-Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
They stood very still, side by side, in the shadow of one of the big office buildings. Six large doors kept swinging open, shut, open, shut, as people walked in and out, in and out, looking straight ahead, straight ahead, paying no attention to the children whatsoever, whatsoever.
-Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Mass Quotes #7
You play grown-up long enough and you lose your perspective on right and wrong. Why not put it off as long as possible?
-Nico, Zeb Wells, Civil War: Young Avengers/Runaways #4
Gert: I’m not buried in that plot, Karolina. Some woman claiming to be me from the future is.
Molly: Why do they call it a plot anyway?
Gert: Because this is how every story ends
-Brian K Vaughan, Runaways #19
He’s a thief. He knows the best security systems are the ones nearest to the bounty. But the human heart can’t accommodate logic. Though I should have realized–that it can overcompensate for it.
-X-Cutioner, Fabian Nicleza, Gambit #5
I kept pushing against the black, though, almost a reflux. I wasn’t trying to lift it. I was just resisting. Not allowing it to crush me completely. I wasn’t Atlas, and the black felt as heavy as a planet; I couldn’t shoulder it. All I could do was not be entirely obliterated.
-Bella, Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn
“You’ll still be Arthur Penhaligon,” she said. “Not the brightest, not the bravest, but up for anything. Least, that’s how I see you. Kind of like a little brother, only you’re taller than me now.”
-Suzy Turquoise Blue, Garth Nix, Superior Saturday
Arthur held the floats for a minute, thinking about something his mother had once said when she was explaining something to his sister Michaeli and didn’t know he was listening. There is never one absolutely right thing to do. All you can do is honor what you believe, accept the consequences of your own actions, and make the best out of whatever happens.
-Garth Nix, Superior Saturday
They move fast. They don’t pull their punches. Real nightmares never do.
-Ed Brubaker, Uncanny X-Men #501
Hisako: That doesn’t sound like such a good idea Mr. Summers.
Cyclops: We’re on mission time now. Codenames.
Hisako: Sorry. That sounds like we’re all going to die, Cyclops
-Warren Ellis, Astonishing X-Men #25
When we die, we come back different, like, with greener eyes, or as some far off star
-A Softer World
Mass Quotes #5
A lot of my current quotes in my notebook come from Paper Towns by John Green. But I read an ARC. The book does not come out until October and I don’t want to put any spoilers out there. So I’ll be nice and wait, impatiently. Fortunately for you though I have also been reading the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books and have plenty of quotes to share from those. But, as always, spoilers may be ahead, so continue with caution.
Bailey thought. “I’m afraid of time,” she answered. She was brave, unflinching in the big Cyclops eye of the camera. There was nothing prissy or self-conscious about Bailey. “I mean, I’m afraid of not having enough time,” she clarified, “Not enough time to understand people, how they really are, or to be understood myself. I’m afraid of the quick judgments and mistakes that everybody makes. You can’t fix them without time. I’m afraid of seeing snapshots instead of movies.”
-Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Maybe it didn’t matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn’t matter if your friend was possibly dying.
Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for.
-Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
-E.L. Doctorow
“Like I said, I’m me…and you’re you. Who’s this or that doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about what Asuma said. Just be yourself.”
-Shikamaru, Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto 174
What made you feel that stomach-churning agony for one person and not another? If Bridget were God, she would have made it against the law for you to feel that way about someone without them having to feel it for you right back.
-Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
She thought about Mr. Kaligaris and all his theories about protecting his mother. Yes, smelling Greek food made Valia sad. He was right about that. And being held by another human seemed to make her sad too. But sometimes, Carmen knew, being sad was what you had to do.
-Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
-Norman Mailer
The real lesson embodied in Katherine’s three-year-old frame was opposite: Try, reach, want, and you may fall. But even if you do, you might be okay anyway.
Flexing her feet under the covers, Tibby thought of a corollary to this lesson: If you don’t try, you save nothing, because you might as well be dead.
-Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
Please let this be real, she thought wistfully. And if it’s not, let me just stay here anyway.
-Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
She was still waiting for him to come back to her, even though he wasn’t going to. She was still holding out for something that wasn’t going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.
Release me she begged, silently of her elephant.
She needed to be free of him. She needed to get on with her life. Maybe even fall in love again.
-Ann Brashares, Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood
Mass Quotes #3
Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards.
-Lewis Carroll
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.”
-Lewis Carroll,
Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
-E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.
-E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
I am in earnest–I will not equivocate–I will not excuse–I will not retreat a single inch–and I will be heard.
-William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
-Frederick Douglas
Just the sound of those chimes made Lucky feel cooler. But she still had doubts and anxious questions in all the crevices of her brain, especially about how to find her Higher Power.
If she could only find it, Lucky was pretty sure she’d be able to figure out the difference between the things she could change and the things she couldn’t, like in the little prayer of the anonymous people. Because sometimes Lucky wanted to change everything, all the bad things that had happened, and sometimes she wanted everything to stay the same forever.
-Susan Patron, The Higher Power of Lucky
Then that sign that still said POP. 43 would really be wrong. But what Lucky wanted most was for that sign to stay the same forever, with no subtracting allowed.
-Susan Patron, The Higher Power of Lucky
Mass quotes #2
Hopefully this goes through, I’ve had some trouble with WordPress this morning. So far seems okay. At the end here I’ll add in a poem from William Blake that I love.
“I’m not afraid of dying. But…living…is such a scary thing to do”
-Mitsuki, Arina Tanemura, Fullmoon Vol 5
“The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is.”
-Desiderius Erasmus
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
-Mahatma Ghandi
“Nothing endures but personal qualities.”
-Walt Whitman
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.”
-Maya Angelou
“My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.”
-Diane Arbus
“I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up.”
-Rosa Parks
“Do not fear going forward slowly, fear only to stand still.”
-Chinese Proverb
“Use what talents you have; the woods would have little music if no birds sang their song except those who sang the best.”
-Reverend Oliver G Wilson
The Smile by William Blake
There is a Smile of Love,
And there is a Smile of Deceit,
And there is a Smile of Smiles
In which these two Smiles meet.
And there is a Frown of Hate,
And there is a Frown of Disdain,
And there is a Frown of Frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain,
For it sticks in the Heart’s deep Core
And it sticks in the deep Backbone;
And no Smile that ever was smil’d,
But only one Smile alone,
That betwixt the Crade & Grave
It only once Smil’d can be;
But, when it once is Smil’d,
There’s an end to all Misery.
Directions; Chinese Proverb
“If we don’t change the direction we are headed, we will end up where we are going.”
-Chinese proverb
Mistakes; Norton Juster
You must never feel badly about making mistakes,” explained Reason quietly, “as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more by being wrong for the right reasons than you do for being right for the wrong reasons.
-Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Encouragement; Winnie the Pooh
Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
-AA Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Destination; Carroll
If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.
