Quotes about fall
page 8

“Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Star

“the lesson of the falling leaves

the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves”

Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) American poet

Love, God, Faith

“The rain comes down harder, darkness falls. We don't care. Together in our house, in the firelight, we are the world made small.”

Jennifer Donnelly book Revolution

Source: Revolution

World, Housing

“Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

Mountain

“When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you
have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all the nerves are still a little raw.”

Jodi Picoult book House Rules

Variant: when you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw
Source: House Rules

Feeling

“Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

On Death and Dying (1969)

Death, Peace, Star, Light

“I didn't fall in love, I rose in it.”

Toni Morrison book Jazz

Jazz

Love, Relationship, Romantic

“There.” She tossed her hair back while he stared at her. “The sky did not fall, the world did not end, neither of us was struck by lightning or beamed straight to hell. I’m not your damn
sister, Delaney. That ought to make it clear.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Savor the Moment

World, Hell, Sister

“You're so afraid of being hurt that you attack first. Only those who really care about you will weather the assault of your verbal attacks and stay. The rest will fall away.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Hurt, Weather

“People think happiness will simply fall into their laps. You have to aspire to it. And sometimes you have to seize it when it’s kicking and screaming.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Needs at Night's Edge

Happiness, People, Thinking

“Should the whole frame of Nature round him break,
In ruin and confusion hurled,
He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,
And stand secure amidst a falling world.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Translation of Horace, Odes, Book III, ode iii.

World, Nature

“Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.”

James Hillman (1926–2011) American psychologist

Life, Star, Light

“When your own romantic life is falling apart, everyone else's looks fabulous.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Life

“If only I could fall
sound asleep and wake up in my old reality!”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Reality

“I can see the warmth. He's falling for me.”

Sophie Kinsella book Twenties Girl

Source: Twenties Girl

“Who can really distinguish between the sea and what's reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Loneliness, Sea

“The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Death, Fashion

“She decided she'd rather die in some less memorable way- maybe falling down the stairs, or going peacefully in her sleep at the age eighty, after a nice quiet life with Percy. Yes, that sounded good.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Life, Age, Way, Sleep

“Did you really JUST fall, Jeffrey?
Why does everybody in my family talk in these dramatic CAPITAL LETTERS all the time? Why am I the only calm one?”

Jordan Sonnenblick (1969) American writer

Source: Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie

Family, Time

“If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Right Attitude to Rain

Source: The Right Attitude to Rain

Way, Thinking

“Then come out," said the king, helping him, "knowing you'll never die of a fall unless the god himself drops you.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

God, Help

“Simon, don’t you think I’m scared of that too? You’re not the only one on that ledge. If we jump, we jump together. We fall together.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Pale Kings and Princes

Thinking

“When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

God

“For the first time I realize how perilous peace can be. I appreciate the tightrope that my grandfather has spent his whole life trying to walk. And now, more than ever, I grow terrified that I'm going to make us all fall down.”

Ally Carter book All Fall Down

Source: All Fall Down

Life, Peace, Time

“The world expected girls to pluck and primp and put on heels. Meanwhile, boys dressed in rumpled T-shirts and baggy pants and misplace their combs, and yet you were suppose to fall at their feet? Unacceptable.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer

Source: Beauty Queens

World, Girl, Boy

“No, see the slide’s too high. He could fall and get a concussion. (Wulf)
Forget that. He could rack himself on the teeter-totter. (Chris)
Teeter-totter nothing. The swings are a choking hazard. Whose idea was it for him to have this? (Urian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Idea, Forgetting

“One of the great joys of falling in love is the feeling that the most extraordinary person in the entire world has chosen you.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Love, World, Feeling, Joy

“You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Saint Anything

People

“Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Source: Life Without Principle

Men, Lie, Effort

“If I fall out, pull this ring? What happens then? I sprout wings and fly?" -Spader in "The Never War”

D.J. MacHale book The Never War

Source: The Never War

War, Flying

“Most important thing in life is learning how to fall.”

Jeannette Walls book Half Broke Horses

Source: Half Broke Horses

Life, Learning, For Him

“… the meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

World, Tree

“I promise you, no one judges me more harshly than I do myself; I caused a brilliant wreckage. Some say I fell from grace; they’re being kind. I didn’t fall – I dove.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Mermaid Chair

Source: The Mermaid Chair

“As long as she was falling in love with me, I might as well start making her promises I didn't intend to keep.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Source: Wonder Boys

Love

“The only trap I must beware not to fall into, is to think that each day is the same as the next. In fact, each morning brings with it a hidden miracle, and we must pay attention to this miracle.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Thinking

“I’ve been listening to how the Roman Empire fell and all I can say is, it didn’t fall nearly fast enough!”-Iggy”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Fang

“Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

Love, People, Soul, Affliction

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

James Joyce book The Dead

Dubliners (1914)
Variant: His soul swooned softly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Source: "The Dead"
Context: Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Soul, Universe, Dead

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Introduction, p. xi.
Source: The Alchemist (1988)
Context: I ask myself: are defeats necessary?
Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for a dream, we have no experience and make mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

Life, Secret, Time, Wise

“Living is a horizontal fall.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Opium (1929)
Variant: Life is a horizontal fall.
Source: Opium: The Diary of His Cure

“The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

Source: Dubliners

Music, Light

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Variant: Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. Your really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

Love, World, Wise, Deep

“And that was it. All this buildup to a great leap, and I didn't fall or fly. Instead I found myself back on the edge of the cliff, blinking, wondering if I'd ever jumped at all. It's not supposed to be like this.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Flying

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall. And the better the world liked seeing them fall.”

Loretta Chase book Lord of Scoundrels

Source: Lord of Scoundrels

World

“Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen'.”

Michael Palin (1943) British comedian, actor, writer and television presenter

Source: Full Circle

Dance, Night

“No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Love, Money

“As he fell toward the highway, a horrible scenario flashed through his mind: his body smashing against an SUV's windshield, some annoyed commuter trying to push him off with the wipers. "Stupid 16-year-old kid falling from the sky! I'm late!”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Stupidity

“Of course, they're not clowning aroundto make me laugh. They're doing their best to live verylives, and they just happen to fall down sometimes. I think that's cool.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Thinking

“Weird doors open. People fall into things.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

People

“Once upon a time, there was a man as great as the gods…
But even the great can tremble with fear.
Even the great can fall”

Mary E. Pearson book The Kiss of Deception

Source: The Kiss of Deception

God, Fear, Time

“I am like a falling star who has finally found her place next to another in a lovely constellation, where we will sparkle in the heavens forever.”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

Love, Star

“She didn't need to understand the meaning of life; it was enough to find someone who did, and then fall asleep in his arms and sleep as a child sleeps, knowing that someone stronger than you is protecting you from all evil and all danger”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

Life, Understanding, Sleep, Evil

“And those who saw, it did surprise,
Such drops could fall from human eyes.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

“A massage is just like a movie, really relaxing and a total escape, except in a massage you're the star. And you don't miss anything by falling asleep!”

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923–2014) writer

Source: Mr. Wrong

Star

“It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

Courage

“We eat the year away. We eat the spring and the summer and the fall. We wait for something to grow and then we eat it.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Spring, Waiting, Summer

“(Jace) "Is there anything special you want to see? Paris? Budapest? The Leaning Tower of Pisa?"
Only if it falls on Sebastian's head, she thought.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Jace and Clary, pg. 220
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Lost Souls (2012)
Context: "Stay with me. We can see the whole world."
"I am with you. I'm not going anywhere."
"Is there anything special you want to see? Paris? Budapest? The Leaning Tower of Pisa?"
Only if it falls on Sebastian's head, she thought.

“There's a reason they say,"Pride goeth before a fall.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

“And maybe that’s was her biggest crime of all. Making him fall in love with her.”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Rush

Love

“Why do two people fall in love? It's a mystery.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Love, People

“Love mattered, in the end. A house without love would always fall, maybe not today or tomorrow, but in the end without love nothing could endure.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Bullet

Source: Bullet

Love, Housing

“Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

As quoted in Vogue (14 March 1963)
1960s
Variant: Always fall in with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against: with.

Life, Way

“I'm going to open another vottle. not a vottle, but a bottle. you open it and I'll drink it. and you try to write as much as I did without falling off of your chair.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Drink

“Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Love, Kiss, Tree

“When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Love, God, Time

“I will not fall in love with you," she said. "I can't let myself. I won't."

"That's all right. I'll love you enough for the both of us.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Source: Lover Eternal

Love

“Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Betrayal

“Governments will rise, and governments will fall, and man will do evil to man, and all we can do is turn our hearts to good.”

Margaret Peterson Haddix book Among the Enemy

Source: Among the Enemy

Evil, Heart

“I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Blood of Others

Source: The Blood of Others

Imagination, Thinking

“Making tea is a ritual that stops the world from falling in on you.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Creeping Shadow

Source: The Creeping Shadow

World, Tea

“One should never fall in the belief that you can find someone to pick you up.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

“Sometimes, when you’re sad you don’t know what to do, it helps to be angry. But then the tears come back again all the same, and you fall asleep with the salty taste of them on your lips.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Sadness, Tear, Help

“[…] falling in love with someone beautiful and intelligent and the rest of it, then feeling like a blank twit put you at something of a disadvantage.”

Nick Hornby About a Boy

Source: About a Boy

Love, Beauty, Feeling, Intelligence

“People die of broken hearts. They have heart attacks. And it's the heart that hurts most when things go wrong and fall apart.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

People, Heart, Hurt

“For years now, I've wanted to fall asleep. The sort of slipping off, the giving up, the falling part of sleep. Now sleeping is the last thing I want to do.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

Sleep, Parting

“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Failure, Sense

“maybe he's falling in love with the idea of falling in love with me. Maybe he wants to be in love with someone and I've ended up in the right place at the right time.”

Candace Bushnell book Summer and the City

Source: Summer and the City

Love, Idea, Time

“When you lose your face…, it is like dropping your necklace down a well. The only way you can get it back is to fall in after it.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Way

“It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.

Under your skin the moon is alive.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: oda a la bella desnuda y otros escritos de amor

World, Light

“You can do anything when it's not real.
When it is real, nothing breaks your fall. Nothing gets between you and the ground.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: Getting the Girl

“Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Fear

“When she saw him face to face their eyes met and brushed like birds’ wings. After that everything was all right, everything was wonderful, she knew that he was beginning to fall in love with her.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Love, Bird

“The Clave thinks the wards will stand forever because they’ve stood for a thousand years. But so did Rome, till the barbarians came. Everything falls someday”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Thinking

“Nothing is ever finished and done with in this world. You may think a seed was finished and done with when it falls like a dead thing into the earth; but when it puts forth leaves and flowers next spring you see your mistake.”

Elizabeth Goudge book The Little White Horse

Source: The Little White Horse

World, Spring, Flowers, Thinking

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Imagination, Star, Tree

“Love [is] supposed to move mountains, to make the world go round, to be all you need, but it [falls] apart at the deatils. It [can't] save a single person.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Love, World, Mountain, Personality

“It's a wicked life, but what the hell, the stars ain't falling down.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Source: Lyrics: 1962-2001

Life, Star, Hell

“When they ran up to him, Percy said, 'Hey,' like they were just meeting for lunch or something.

'You're alive!' Frank marveled.

Percy frowned. 'The fall? That was nothing. I fell twice that far from the St. Louis Arch.'

'You didHazel asked.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“You know what it’s like when you’re trying to fall asleep and it only makes you more wide awake?”

Haruki Murakami book The Elephant Vanishes

Source: The Elephant Vanishes

“Ignorantly is how we all fall in love; for it is a kind of fall. Closing our eyes, we leap from that cliff in hope of a soft landing. Nor is it always soft; but still, without that leap nobody comes to life.”

Salman Rushdie book The Moor's Last Sigh

Source: The Moor's Last Sigh

Love, Life, Hope

“My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Context: My favorite piece of information is that Branwell Brontë, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantelpiece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.

Tree