Quotes about everything
page 19

“My choices were to either give in and let them kill all of us or fight back with everything I had. I chose the second one, ’cause I’m just funny that way.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Way, Fight

“I think you’re beautiful, the only beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I love your voice and everything to do with you, down to your clothes or the room you are sitting in. I adore you.”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

Love, Beauty, Thinking, Personality

“Now all you can do is wait. It must be hard for you, but there is a right time for everything. Like the ebb and flow of tides. No one can do anything to change them. When it is time to wait, you must wait.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Change, Time, Waiting

“Home is everything you can walk to.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics

Home

“I brought my lips down to hers, and it was like everything that had ever happened to me had simply been a warm-up for this moment, that this was where my life truly began.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Life

“Art’s something you choose to make … it’s a bringing together of … of everything around you into something that makes you more human, more khepri, whatever. More of a person.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station (2000), p. 82

Art, Personality

“Murder had a blood red door on the other side of which was everything unimaginable to everyone.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

“When that piece makes sense, everything else starts to.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Sense

“You've always had me… and my heart. My soul. Everything. I wish it hadn't taken this long for me to man up.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Soul, Heart

“I'm learning how to taste everything.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Learning

“Everything we do we choose. So what is there to regret? You are the person you chose to be.”

Paul Arden (1940–2008) writer

Source: Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite

Personality

“I unpetalled you, like a rose,
to see your soul,
and I didn't see it.
But everything around
-horizons of land and of seas-,
everything, out to the infinite,
was filled with a fragrance,
enormous and alive.”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

Soul, Sea

“I don’t want to forget any of this. The way he’s looking at me at this very moment. How, when he kisses me, I still get shivers down my back, every time. I want to hold on to everything so tight.”

Jenny Han book Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Source: Always and Forever, Lara Jean

Way, Kiss, Time, Forgetting

“She told me that every other step was just for me.'
But that's only half of the dance,' I said.
Yeah,' my father said. 'She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain't healthy.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Dance

“I dropped all the guards. All the leashes, all the chains, everything that ever restrained me through the discipline and fear of discovery, I let it all go. No need to hide.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Fear

“Do not let what you think they think of you make you stop and question everything you are.”

Carrie Fisher book The Princess Diarist

Source: The Princess Diarist

Question, Thinking

“He was twenty. I remembered twenty. I'd known everything at twenty. It took me another year to realize I knew nothing. I was still hoping to learn something before I hit thirty, but I wasn't holding my breath.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Circus of the Damned

Source: Circus of the Damned

Hope, Learning

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

essay, first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly (November, 1945)
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

World, Weather

“I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn’t drown.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

Kiss, Water, Hurt

“It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Variant: It’s pathetic how we can’t live with the things we can’t understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.
Source: Asfixia

Understanding

“The night crackled… Everything had turned to static electricity in the heat. I combed my hair to watch the sparks fly from the ends.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Flying, Night

“Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

“This is the charged, the dangerous moment, when everything must be re-examined, must be made new, when nothing at all can be taken for granted.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

“Everything has boundaries. The same holds true with thought. You shouldn't fear boundaries, but you should not be afraid of destroying them. That's what is most important if you want to be free: respect for and exasperation with boundaries.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Fear

“They looked like two children," she told me. And that thought frightened her, because she'd always felt that only children are capable of everything.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Source: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Children

“Start with the difficult and when it gets easy, everything else is easier.”

Frank Delaney (1942–2017) Irish writer and journalist

Source: The Matchmaker of Kenmare

“Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Love, Fools, Thinking

“It isn't wise to be rude to one's mother. She knows everything about your childhood that is potentially embarassing.”

Mercedes Lackey (1950) American novelist and short story writer

Source: Elvenborn

Childhood

“If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything.”

Joyce Carol Oates book First Love: A Gothic Tale

Source: First Love: A Gothic Tale

“Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write”

Dani Shapiro (1962) Author

Source: Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

Life, Learning

“They're beautiful. But sad.'
Everything's sad if you make it so, I said.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Sadness, Beauty

“There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead. You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discover everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction. These people with dead children, you want to tell them, go ahead. Blame yourself. There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it. Just read the newspaper.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3

Love, Children, People, Books

“Power changes everything till it is difficult to say who are the heroes and who the villains.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Change

“Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go someplace where you don't know a soul? Sometimes I feel like doing that. I really really want to do it sometimes.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Feeling, Soul, Thinking

“Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Loss

“The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it's the temperature of happiness.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Happiness, People, Feeling, Time

“Was it better to think you had lost everything, and to start over? Or easier to know that the people you loved were alive, even if you could never see them again?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Love, People, Thinking

“Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

Fear, Jealousy, Training

“Because I don't have everything I want. Not even close.”

Alyson Nöel book Dark Flame

Source: Dark Flame

“History is hereditary only in this way: we, all of us, inherit everything, and then we choose what to cherish, what to disavow, and what do do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from.”

Jill Lepore (1966) American historian

Way, History

“You can't control everything. You can't control how someone feels about you. Or what makes them tick. You can only control how you react, how you act, how you think and feel.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Rush

Feeling, Thinking

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”

George Bernard Shaw Major Barbara

Source: 1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

Thinking, Funny

“You know how to shoot?"- Emma

"Yes. My dad taught me everything about gun safety. He was an expert." - Heather

"What happened to him?" -Shanna

"He was… shot." -Heather”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: The Undead Next Door

“Everything is theoretically impossible, until it’s done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 2, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin” (p. 23)

History, Science

“A weakened mind always sees everything through a black veil. The soul makes its own horizons; your soul is dark, which is why you see such a cloudy sky.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Variant: It is the way of weakened minds to see everything through a black cloud. The soul forms its own horizons; your soul is darkened, and consequently the sky of the future appears stormy and unpromising
Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Soul

“Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced everything with exact duplicates… When I pointed it out to my roommate, he said, "Do I know you?”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

Night

“What's so hard about that first sentence is that you're stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you've laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

Time

“Don't believe everything you hear”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Unbelievable

“The truth was, there was no way everything could be the Best. Sometimes, when it came to events and people, it had to be okay to just.”

Sarah Dessen book The Moon and More

Source: The Moon and More

People, Truth, Way

“Zach, we have to stop her!"
But Zach just held me. He looked at me with shock and awe and just a little bit of wonder. In spite of everything, I thought that he might laugh.
"Gallagher Girl," he told me, "youthe school.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

Youth, School, Girl

“All night, I talked to other people. I didn't look in his direction, but I always knew where he was. I was painfully aware of him. When he was nearby, my body hummed. When he was away, there was this dull ache. With him near, I felt everything.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

People, Night

“I hope the snow covers everything so all the footsteps are silenced, and the whole city can be at peace.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Peace, Hope, Silence

“This is what I like about photographs. They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Perfection

“Nothing has to be true, but everything has to sound true.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

“And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

“Everything tender and melancholy - as life is sometimes, just for one moment.”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Life

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Variant: summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Color, Sleep, Summer, Season