Quotables: Well-Loved Books

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It was showing signs of wear: 

the dearer a book was to my heart, 

the more battered and bruised it became.

- From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Quotables: What Makes a Classic

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A classic

is a book

that has never finished saying

what it has to say.

- Italo Calvino

Quotables: Living More Intensely

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The test of literature is, 

I suppose, 

whether we ourselves 

live more intensely 

for the reading of it. 

-- Elizabeth Drew

Quotables: Bringing Stories to Life

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The thing about a story

is that you dream it as you tell it,

hoping that others might then

dream along with you, 

and in this way

memory and imagination and language combine

to make spirits in the head.

There is the illusion of aliveness.

- From The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Quotables: From Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

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“Rafe’s wife Helen bursts into tears when she hears the news. ‘He will be away at court,’ she says, ‘for weeks at a time.’

            

He sits with her in the parlour at Brick Place, consoling her as best he can. ‘This is the best thing that has ever happened for Rafe, I know,’ she says. ‘I am a fool to weep over it. But I cannot bear to be parted from him, nor he from me. When he is late I send men to look along the road. I wish we could be under the same roof every night we live.’

            

‘He is a lucky man,’ he says. ‘And I don’t mean just lucky in the king’s favour. You are both of you lucky. To love so much.’

- Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

I am in the home stretch of my husband being away at Officer Basic Training camp -- just under two weeks left until he comes home. However, I've noticed it gets harder and harder the longer he's gone, not easier, and this quote completely captures how I feel about it. I know it's a great opportunity, but sometimes I wish it were different!

Quotables: Victor Hugo on reading

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To learn to read

is to light a fire;

every syllable spelled out

sparkles.

-- Victor Hugo

Quotables: Peony in Love

Maybe it's a gift to experience emotions through our brushes, ink, and paper. 

I wrote out of sorrow, fear, and hate. 

You wrote out of desire, joy, and love. 

We each paid a heavy price for speaking our minds,

 for revealing our hearts, 

for trying to create, 

but it was worth it, 

wasn't it, daughter? 

- Lisa See, Peony in Love

Quotables: From The Day Before by Lisa Schroeder

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Many times

when I read a book, 

I want to savor

each word, 

each phrase,

each page,

loving the prose

so much, 

I don't want it

to end.

Other times

the story pulls me in,

and I can hardly

read fast enough

the details flying by,

some of them lost

because all that matters

is making sure

the character

is all right

when it's over.

This day

is like the best

of both kinds

of books.

I want to cherish

each moment and yet,

I've got to know

that this character

named Cade

will be okay

when this story

ends.

- Lisa Schroeder, The Day Before

Quotables: Reading and Writing

Read, read, read. 
Read everything -- 

trash, classics, good and bad, 

and see how they do it. 

Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. 

Read! 

You'll absorb it. 

Then write. 

If it's good, you'll find out. 

If it's not, throw it out of the window.

 Faulkner

Quotables: On Reading by Susan Ban Breathnach

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Many writers will tell you they write to create a cosmos in which they can cozily cohabit with themselves.

Of course, we read for the same reason.

To find refuge, a soul shelter, a safe place in a world clearly gone mad.

We read for pleasure or we read to quiet the pain from a deafening roar to a dull throb.

We read to forget who we are or discover it;

we read to understand.

But most of all, we do read 

to learn something we didn't know

before we turned the page.

- Susan Ban Breathnach

Quotables: Opportunities in the New Year

We will open the book. 

Its pages are blank. 

We are going to put words on them ourselves.

The book is called Opportunity

and its first chapter

is New Year's Day. 

- Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Quotables: What Three Authors Think of Thanksgiving

Mark Twain: The Cynical Approach

Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for - annually, not oftener - if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.

Ayn Rand: The Raging Capitalist Approach

Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday... The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.

E.P. Powell: The "Nice" Approach

Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude. 

Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you all have a wonderful week preparing and hopefully finding a way to be with family. I know for me, it can't come soon enough!

Quotables: George Eliot on Autumn

Delicious autumn! 

My very soul is wedded to it, 

and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth 

seeking the successive autumns.

 - George Eliot

Quotables: Voltaire

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All the known world

excepting only savage nations

is governed by books.

Voltaire. 

Quotables: On Marriage

(I originally meant to post this last week on my 1st anniversary, August 17th. I ended up running out of time to schedule posts, but couldn't put it on the back burner, so here it is for you a week later).

I have now been married ten years.

I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth.

I hold myself supremely blest - blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine.

No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

I know no weariness of my [husband's] society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together.

To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.

We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.

All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me;

we are perfectly suited in character -

perfect concord is the result.

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Quotables: Music and Literature

"Music and Literature," William Michael Harnett

La musique a sept lettres, l'écriture a vingt-cinq notes.

Music has seven letters, writing has twenty-five notes.

Joseph Joubert

Quotables: C.S. Lewis

You can't get a cup of tea large enough

or a book long enough

to suit me.

C.S. Lewis

Quotables: From Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

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One day a good fortune befell him, for he hit upon Lane's translation of the Thousand Nights and a Night.

He was captured first by the illustrations, and then he began to read. [...]

He could think of nothing else.

He forgot the life about him.

He had to be called two or three times before he would come to his dinner.

Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading:

he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life;

he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment. [...]

Whenever he started a book with two solitary travellers riding along the brink of a desperate ravine he knew he was safe.

From Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham.

Quotables is a new feature I am incorporating into my blog. It will feature notable passages from books and other bookish quotes.