The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.”
“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
“I'm in love with you," he said quietly.

"Augustus," I said.

"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
“What a slut time is. She screws everybody.”
“The marks humans leave are too often scars.”
“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”
“Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
“Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said.

"Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.”
“The world is not a wish-granting factory.”
“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
“May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice.

I smiled. "Sure."

"Tomorrow?" he asked.

"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager.

"Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said.

"You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?"

"But you don't even have my phone number," he said.

"I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book."

He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other.”

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The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
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The Fault in Our Stars Quotes (showing 1-30 of 2,068)
“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: love
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“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
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“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: books, power-of-words, reading
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“I'm in love with you," he said quietly.

"Augustus," I said.

"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: doomed, inevitable, love, oblivion, pleasure, simple
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“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: satisfaction, self-determination
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“Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: infinity, john-green, life, tfios, the-fault-in-our-stars
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“What a slut time is. She screws everybody.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
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“The marks humans leave are too often scars.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: humans, pain, scars
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“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: infinity
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“Oh, I wouldn't mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: augustus-waters, hazel, heartbreak, privilege
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“Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said.

"Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: faith, faithfulness, love, promises
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“The world is not a wish-granting factory.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
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“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: change, grief, loss, revelation
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“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
tags: existence, life
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“May I see you again?" he asked. There was an endearing nervousness in his voice.

I smiled. "Sure."

"Tomorrow?" he asked.

"Patience, grasshopper," I counseled. "You don't want to seem overeager.

"Right, that's why I said tomorrow," he said. "I want to see you again tonight. But I'm willing to wait all night and much of tomorrow." I rolled my eyes. "I'm serious," he said.

"You don't even know me," I said. I grabbed the book from the center console. "How about I call you when I finish this?"

"But you don't even have my phone number," he said.

"I strongly suspect you wrote it in this book."

He broke out into that goofy smile. "And you say we don't know each other.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
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“Augustus Waters was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more.'
'Seventeen,' Gus corrected.
'I'm assuming you've got some time, you interupting bastard.
'I'm telling you,' Isaac continued, 'Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
'But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off, because I do not want to see a world without him.'
I was kind of crying by then.”
“Without pain, how could we know joy?' This is an old argument in the field of thinking about suffering and its stupidity and lack of sophistication could be plumbed for centuries but suffice it to say that the existence of broccoli does not, in any way, affect the taste of chocolate.”
“Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.”
“It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.”
“Maybe 'okay' will be our 'always”
“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is inprobably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?”
“That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence”
“You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail.”
“You are so busy being YOU that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.”
“Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence”
“It's just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.'
'Right, it's primarily his hotness,' I said.
'It can be sort of blinding,' he said.
'It actually did blind our friend Isaac,' I said.
'Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?'
'You cannot.'
'It is my burden, this beautiful face.'
'Not to mention your body.'
'Seriously, don't even get me started on my hot bod. You don't want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace's breath away,' he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank.”
“But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.”
“Gus: "It tastes like..."
Me: "Food."
Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately...?"
Me: "It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down around your canal-side dinner table."
Gus: "Nicely phrased."
Gus's father: "Our children are weird."
My dad: "Nicely phrased.”
“You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.”
“What's that?"
"The laundry basket?"
"No, next to it."
"I don't see anything next to it."
"It's my last shred of dignity. It's very small.”
The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

Eat Pray Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

« The traditional japa mala is strung with 108 beads. Amid the more esoteric circles of Eastern philosophers, the number 108 is held to be most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to nine, which is three threes. And three, of course, is the number representing supreme balance, as anyone who has ever studied either the Holy Trinity or a simple barstool can plainly see. »

« Giovanni is my Tandem Exchange Partner. That sounds like an innuendo, but unfortunately it’s not. All it really means is that we meet a few evenings a week here in Rome to practice each other’s languages. We speak first in Italian, and he is patient with me ; then we speak in English, and I am patient with him. »

« Tall, dark and handsome identical twenty-five-year-old twins, as it turned out, with those giant brown liquid-center Italian eyes that just unstitch me. »

« This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude. »

« For years, I’d wished I could speak Italian – a language I find more beautiful than roses »

« But why must eveything always have a practical application ? I’d been such a diligent soldier for years – working, producing, never missin a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty ? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now ? And it wasn’t that outrageous a goal, anyway, to want to study a language. »

« I started referring to my cell phone as il moi telefonino (« my teensy little telephone »). »

« My divorce lawyer told me not to worry ; she said she had one client (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again. »

« The medicine man, as it turned out, was a small, merry-eyed, russet-coloured old guy with a mostly toothless mouth, whose resemblance in every way to the Star Wars character Yoda cannot be exaggerated. »

« Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time. »

« You will live a long time, have many friends, many experiences. You will see the whole world. You only have one problem in your life. You worry too much. Always you get too emotional, too nervous. If I promise you that you will never have any reason in your life to never worry about anything, will you believe me ? »

« The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. »

« I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. »

« But some things are only in Rome. Like the sandwich counterman so comfortably calling me « beautiful » every time we speak. You wan this panino grilled or cold, bella ? Or the couples making out all over the place, like there is some contest for it, twisting into each other on benches, stroking each other’s hair and crotches, nuzzling and grinding ceaselessly… »

« It’s kind of a fairyland of language for me here. For someone who has always wanted to speak Italian, what could be better than Rome ? It’s like somebody invented a city just to suit my specifications, where everyone (even the children, even the taxi drivers, even the actors n the commercials !- speaks this magical language. »

« I wandered through, touching all the books, hoping that anyone watching me might think I was a native speaker. Oh, how I want Italian to open itself up to me ! »

« Truthfully, I’m not the best traveller in the world. I know this because I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve met people who are great at it. Real naturals. I’ve met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcutta gutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard or cajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go – in Turkey they just mght be Turks, in Mexico they are suddenly Mexican, in Spain they could be mistaken for Basque, in Northern Africa they can sometimes pass for Arab… »

« I have never learned how to arrange my face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know – that super-relaxed, totally-in-charge expression which makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of a riot in Jakarta. »

« Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Ruddia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to traveil is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travels, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby – I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to – I just don’t care. »

« I am patient. I know how to pack light. I’m a fearless eater. But my one mighty travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. »

« Mostly, you meet your friends when traveling by accident, like by sitting next to them on a train, or in a restaurant, or in a holding cell. »

« Depression even confiscates my identity ; but he always does that. »

« I took on my depression like it was the fight of my life, which, of course, it was. I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this despair ? Was it psychological ? (Mom and Dad’s fault ?) Was it just temporal, a « bad time » in my life ? (When the divorce ends, will the depression end with it ?) Was it genetic (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural ? (Is this just the fallout of a post-feminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world ?) Was it astrological ? (Am I so sad because I’m a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini ?) Was it artistic ? (Don’t creative people always suffer from depression because we’re so supersensitive and special ?) Was it evolutionary ? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millenia of my species’ attempting to survive a brutal world ?) Was it karmic ? (Are all these spasms of gried just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation ?) Was it hormonal ? Dietary ? Philosophical ? Seasonal ? Environmental ? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God ? Did I have a chemical imbalance ? Or did I just need to get laid ?

What a large number of factors constitute a single human being ! »

« Here, in this most private notebook, is where I talk to myself. »

« Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new. »

« Humor is hard to catch in a second language. »

« I don’t even know if David and I are totally broken up yet. »

« Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, to be honest. »

« We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say « I’ve been there. » This was unclear to him at first – I’ve been where ? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.

« So sadness is a place ?’ Giovanni asked.

« Sometimes people live there for years, » I said.

In return, Giovanni told me that empathizing Italians say L’ho provato sulla mia pelle, which means « I have experienced that on my own skin. » Meaning, I have also been burned or scarred in this way, and I know exactly what you’re going through. »

« I won’t go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life ; I don’t think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies onto earth. »

« There is a theory that if you yearn sincerely enough for a Guru, you will find one. The universe will shift, destiny’s molecules will get themselves organized and your path will soon intersect with the path of the master you need. »

« Medidate on whatever causes a revolution in your mind. »

« But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who show you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever ? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. »

« Later, over the years, my hypersensitive awareness of time’s speed led me to push myself to experience life at a maximum pace. If i were going to have such a short visit on earth, I had to do everything possible to experience it now. Hence all the traveling, all the romances, all the ambition, all the pasta. »

« In my family, they have already given up on me as too different. »

« This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. »

« sometimes the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. »

« I believe that all the world’s religions share, at their core, a desire to find a transporting metaphor. »

« Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. »

« I had a dream you are riding your bicycle anywhere. »

«He’s got a smile that could stop crime. »

« Ketut went on to explain that the Balinese believe we are each accompanied at birth by four invisible brothers, who come into the world with us and protect us throughout our lives. When the child is in the womb, her four siblings are even there with her – they are represented by the placenta, the amniotic fluid, the umbilical cord and the yellow waxy substance that protects an unborn baby’s skin. »

« She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never becom lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a healing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments. »

« all the sorrow and trouble  of this world is caused by unhappy people »

« You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. »

« Well, I always try to look nice and be feminine even in the war zones and refugee camps of Central America. Even in the worst tragedies and crisis, there’s no reason to add everyone’s misery by lookinf miserable yourself. That’s my philosophy. This is why I always wore makeup and jewelry into the jungle – nothing too extravagant, but maybe just a nice gold bracelet and some earrings, a little lipstick, good perfume. Just enough to show that I still had my self-respect. »

In a way, Armenia reminds me of those great Victorian-era British lady travelers, who used to say there’s no excuse for wearing clothes in Africa that would be unsuited for an English drawing room. She’s a butterfly, this Armenia. »

« The boldness of my statement hovered in the air around us like a fragrance. »

« I like the fact that Felipe speaks four, maybe moe, languages fleuntly. »

« I don’t feel like going through all the effort of romance again, you know ? I don’t feel like having to shave my legs every day or having to show my body to a new lover. And I don’t want to have to tell my life story all over again, or worry about birth control. Anyway, I’m not even sure I know how to do it anymore. I feel like I was more confident about sex and romance when I was sixteen than I am now. »

« Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance. Do you think any of us know what we’re doing ? Do you think there’s any way humans can love each other without complication ? You should see how it happens in Bali, darling. All these Western men come here after they’ve made a mess of their lives back home, and they decide they’ve ha dit with Western women, and they go marry some tiny, sweet, obedient little Balinese teenage girl. I know what they’re thinking. They think this pretty little girl will make them happy, make their lives easy. But whenever I see it happen, I always want to say the same thing. Good luck. Because you still have a woman in front of you, my friend. And you are still a man. It’s still two human beings trying to get along, so it’s going to become complicated. And love is always commplicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. »

« He told me that Brazilians have a term for exactly my kind of body (of course they do), which is magra-falsa, translating as ‘fake thin,’ meaning that the woman looks slender enough from a distance, but when you get up close, you can see that she’s actually quite round and fleshy, which Brazilians consider a good thing. God bless Brazilians. »

« I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is  emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and then I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to  ascend his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism. »

« To feel physically comfortable with someone else’s body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there (as I have learned in the past, with heart-breaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient’s body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question : ‘Do you want you belly pressed against this person’s belly forever – or not ? »

« To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life. »

« Now that we’re together, I get to hear Felipe’s version of how we met, a delicious story I never tire of hearing »

« Let your conscience be your guide. »

« I hadn’t even brought any books to read, nothing to distract me. Just me and my mind, about to face each other on an empty field. »

« Fear- who cares ? »

« there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. »

« I was the administrator of my own rescue. »

Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert

To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee

« When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them… »

« All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess. »

« Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but itself. »

« Jem and I found our father satisfactory : he played with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment. »

« She was all angles and bones. »

« Dill had seen Dracula, a revelation that moved Jem to eye him with the beginning of respect. »

« Routine contentment was : improving our treehouse that rested between giant twin chinaberry trees in the back yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas based on the works of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton and Edgar Rice Burroughs. »

« I would be starting to school in a week . I never looked forward more to anything in my life. »

« I never deliberatly learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers. »

« You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view »

« Grown folks don’t have hidin’ places. »

« Do you smell my mimosa ? It’s like angels’ breath this evening. »

« There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results. »

« It’s bad children like you makes the seasons change. »

« No matter what anybody says to you, don’t you let’em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change… It’s a good one, even if it does resist learning. »

« Aunt Alexandra would have been analogous to Mount Everest : throughout my early life, she was cold and there. »

« I liked to smell him ; he was like a bottle of alcohol and something pleasantly sweet. »

« You want to grow up to be a lady, don’t you ? I said not particularly. »

« Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean. He was the most boring child I ever met. »

« Your daughter gave me my first lessons this afternoon. She said I didn’t understand children much and told me why. She was quite right. »

« When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em. No, ‘ my father mused, ‘you had the right answer this afternoon, but the wrong reasons. Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time, when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it. »

« Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.

‘You father’s right,’ she said. ‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.’ »

« He walked quickly, but I thought he moved like an underwater swimmer : time had slowed to a nauseating crawl. »

« People in their right minds never take pride in their talents »

« You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever’s she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.’ »

« You look like a picture this evening. »

« I do my best to love everybody. »

« Although Maycomb was ignored during the War Between the States, Reconstruction rule and economic ruin forced the town to grow. It grew inward. New people so rarely settled there, the same families married the same families until the members of the community looked faintly alike. »

« Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of hiw own inventions. He could add and substract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talking himself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of his foggy island there rose the faded image of a grey house with sad brown doors. »

« He said his only exercise was walking. In Maycomb, if one went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correct to believe one’s mind incapable of definite purpose. »

« ‘Do you really think so ?’ This was the second time I heard Atticus ask that question in two days, and it meant somebody’s man would get jumped. »

« Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in. »

« That proves something – that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children… you children last night made Walter Cunningham stand in my shoes for a minute. That was enough.’ »

« We knew she wore a grin of the uttermost wickedness. »

« She knew full well the enormity of her offence, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. »

« I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world who were born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father’s one of them. »

« I waited I thought, Atticus Finch won’t win, he can’t win, but he’s the only man in these parts who can keep a jury ou so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we’re making a step – it’s just a baby-step, but it’s a step.’ »

« I must soon enter this world, where on its surface fragrant ladies rocked slowly, fanned gently, and drank cool water.

But I was more at home in my father’s world. People like Mr Heck Tate did not trap you with innocent questions to make fun of you ; even Jem was not highly critical unless you said something stupid. Ladies seemed to live in faint horror of men, seemed unwilling to approve wholeheartedly of them. But I liked them. There was something about them, no matter how much they cussed and drank and gambled and chewed ; no matter how undelectable they were, there was something about them that I instinctively liked… they weren’t –

‘Hypocrites, Mrs Perkins, born hypocrites,’ Mrs Merriweather was saying. »

« I guess Tom was tired of white men’s chances and preferred to take his own. »

« Atticus had used every tool available to free men to save Tom Robinson, but in the secret courts of men’s hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed. »

« Jem was becoming almost as good as Atticus at making you feel right when things went wrong. »

« That was the stillness before the thunderstorm. »

« ‘How’d you know you were under the tree, you couldn’t see thunder out there.’

‘I was barefooted, and Jem says the ground’s always cooler under a tree.’

‘We’ll have to make him a deputy, go ahead.’ »

« His lips parted into a timid smile, and out neighbour’s image blurred with my sudden tears. ‘Hey, Boo, I said. »

« Atticus looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and hugged him and kissed him with all my might. »

To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee