Mass Quotes #10
“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
-Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
“We tend to think things are new because we’ve just discovered them.”
-Charles Wallace, Madeleine L’Engle, A Wind in the Door
“When I was called to you,” Gaudior corrected. “And When is not what matters. It’s what happens in the When that matters.”
-Madeleine L’Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet
“Questions, questions.” Gaudior stomped one silver hoof. “I am not some kind of computer. Only machines have glib answers for everything.”
-Madeleine L’Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet
The author determines the text; the reader determines its meaning.
-John Green
“Let’s face it Aaron, we’re just too different: You like Stephen Hawking. I like Stephen King. You know it would never have worked.”
-Mel, Meg Cabot, The Boy Next Door
“You cannot imagine how time…can be…so still.
It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it.
It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce.”
-Margaret Edson, Wit
“Of course,” Brigitte said. “Adults have big, big wishes that we do not expect to come true. That is why we need so many more candles on our cakes.”
-Susan Patron, Lucky Breaks
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 #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.
Audience; Walter Ong
“The writer’s audience is always a fiction.”
-Walter Ong
Writing; Armstrong
“Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it’s so hurtful to think about writing.”
-Heather Armstrong
Writing; Nietzshe
“All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with and then I can turn the world upside down.”
-Friedrich Nietzshe
Blogging; John Scalzi
“Blogging very often takes the form of what writers call “cat vacuuming” which is to say it’s an activity you do to avoid actual writing.”
-John Scalzi, on writing
Fantasy; Justine Larbalestier
“I was also determined to write a fantasy where the fate of the entire world isn’t in the balance. A small scale fantasy with small scale magic.”
-Justine Larbalestier, on her book Magic or Madness
