Wow, I just started reading this one...
From page 1: "Once the story was outside of my head, I could let go a little."
From page 1: "The brain is a tangle of memory, feeling, hope, and dream. Pull on a thread and it all unravels."
From page 1: "... it's the unspoken that is most frightening."
The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch
From page 76: "Her perfume suddenly smelled like it was trying too hard, its odor so out of place on the mud it frightened me."From page 81: "I wanted to tell her that my parents were acting like strangers again, and ask her why her mother left and how long it took to get used to that. Most of all I wanted to tell her how sick Florence was - it was getting harder for her to feed herself - without breaking promises. But this is what I said: "You know how most sea life tries to blend in the scenery?"
From page 100: "That's the thing about the earth. It doesn't stop to acknowledge the daily disasters of the living."
From page 100: "I think that's what drives people toward faith, that unsettling realization that the physical world goes on without them, before them, after them, without recognition or sympathy."
From page 103: "When something turns out well, everyone dwells on what went right. It's like reading about a ball game you saw. If a team winds, it's all about what they did well, even though defeat was just a weird bounce or a bad call away. It's the same way with almost everything."
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| A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny |
From page 9: "But Armand's eyes kept drifting back to his study, crowded with impatient young men and women, cheek by jowl, stating at him. Waiting for the old man to decide what next for them, as old men had decided the fate of youth for millennia."
From page 42: "... Have you ever seen a self-portrait where the person didn't look just a little insane? Now I know why. You might start off smiling, or looking intelligent or thoughtful. But the longer you stare, the more you see. All the emotions and thoughts and memories. All the stuff we hide..."
From page 225: "We forget nothing," he said. "It's all there, waiting to be triggered. By a death, for instance."
From page 232: "When words avoid you, or continually cross you up, you have no escape from yourself."
- Elizabeth Hay
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| The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson |
The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson
From page 114: "Strange, he thought later, how sometimes when you start thinking about a person, you seem to bring them to the foreground of your life."
From page 133: "But then Gunter, who was the eldest, must have realized what the silence was about, because he suddenly got mad and said they were as Canadian as anyone else in the truck, as Canadian as anyone else in the whole damned country; they'd been born here, and their parents had given them their blessing to go off to fight for Canada - not England, mind you, they weren't fighting for England, but for Canada - and had told them to take the truck to go and join up, and what more proof did anybody want? Which made them all fell ashamed.
After that they were quiet for a bit."
From page 141: "Each year the teachers implied that the exams you were taking now were the most critical ones you would ever face, and each year the moment you finished you could see the next lot looming. It was like climbing a mountain - it wasn't until you reached the top that you realized it wasn't the top, it was merely a foothill."
From page 152: "Good luck. Maybe that's all it was. Maybe the whole of life depended not on how hard you tried, how determined you were, how sensible, how smart: maybe the whole shooting match depended on luck."
From page 293: "It was so easy for women - their arms opened out instinctively and they gathered in whatever hurt there was and that was that: they didn't even have to think about it. Arthur and Bernhard looked at each other helplessly, then looked away."
- Mary Lawson
From page 114: "Strange, he thought later, how sometimes when you start thinking about a person, you seem to bring them to the foreground of your life."
From page 133: "But then Gunter, who was the eldest, must have realized what the silence was about, because he suddenly got mad and said they were as Canadian as anyone else in the truck, as Canadian as anyone else in the whole damned country; they'd been born here, and their parents had given them their blessing to go off to fight for Canada - not England, mind you, they weren't fighting for England, but for Canada - and had told them to take the truck to go and join up, and what more proof did anybody want? Which made them all fell ashamed.
After that they were quiet for a bit."
From page 141: "Each year the teachers implied that the exams you were taking now were the most critical ones you would ever face, and each year the moment you finished you could see the next lot looming. It was like climbing a mountain - it wasn't until you reached the top that you realized it wasn't the top, it was merely a foothill."
From page 152: "Good luck. Maybe that's all it was. Maybe the whole of life depended not on how hard you tried, how determined you were, how sensible, how smart: maybe the whole shooting match depended on luck."
From page 293: "It was so easy for women - their arms opened out instinctively and they gathered in whatever hurt there was and that was that: they didn't even have to think about it. Arthur and Bernhard looked at each other helplessly, then looked away."
- Mary Lawson
Quilting Isn't Funny by Megan Dougherty
Quilting Isn't Funny by Megan Dougherty
Yes, Megan, quilting is very funny.
Yes, Megan, quilting is very funny.
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| Rules of Civility by Amor Towles |
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
Too many beautifully written paragraphs to quote. Here is an example from page 4: "What a relief it was, those few minutes with our guard let down and our gaze inexact, finding the one true solace that human isolation allows."
Okay, I can't resist this one from page 37: "... be careful when choosing what you're proud of - because the world has every intention of using it against you."
- Amor Towles
- Amor Towles
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
I have no quotes from this novel because I was totally absorbed in the story. Wow. I read this one in one day (because I couldn't set it down).
Lessons in French by Hilary Reyl
I have no quotes. My quote notebook was not with me when I read this one. |
| Artisan Drinks by Lindy Wildsmith |
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| The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary by Andrew Westoll |
The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary by Andrew Westoll
From page 257: "... his story a beginning, a middle and an end. It is a human impulse to search for these things. The challenge, as the ethicist Margaret Somerville writes, is to continue our search right up to the end, "to make dying the last great act of living." |
| Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger |
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
"Do you think Karl's a freak?"
I thought about that and decided there was probably something different about everybody and Karl's way of being different was no worse than anybody else's.
"No", I said.
"Do you think he was telling the truth about him and Ariel?"
"Yes."
We were quiet a long time. I didn't know what he was thinking but I was thinking I wanted desperately to be someone better than I was. Finally I heard him yawn and turn toward the wall to sleep and the last thing he said to me that night was,"So do I."
- William Kent Krueger
- William Kent Krueger
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| Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay |
Alone in the Classroom by Elizabeth Hay
From page 27: "Why didn't they realize that a sentence, like a person, can take only so much? But this was school. Lessons carried you from simple to complex, from the everyday to the abstract, as if this were progress."
From page 32: "We let these people into our lives. They enter, and because we let them stay to work on our minds and hearts and imaginations, it's as if we have invited them in."
From page 79: "And when is it ever convincing, the belief others have in your abilities? You know perfectly well they can't see the mess inside you."
From page 79: "And when is it ever convincing, the belief others have in your abilities? You know perfectly well they can't see the mess inside you."
From page 200: "But so many things are never discussed at all, never mentioned, never asked. It takes a certain mood, a certain time of day. The room empties out and in the welcome stillness we find the stray crumbs of our own thoughts."
From page 225: "We forget nothing," he said. "It's all there, waiting to be triggered. By a death, for instance."
From page 232: "When words avoid you, or continually cross you up, you have no escape from yourself."
- Elizabeth Hay
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| The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale |
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