Quotes about likeness
page 79

“Nevertheless, the book gave Jack a feeling he had never had before, that the past was like a story, in which one thing led to another, and the world was not a boundless mystery, but a finite thing that could be comprehended.”

Ken Follett book The Pillars of the Earth

Source: The Pillars of the Earth

Books, World, Feeling, Past

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: Keeping a Rendezvous

Books, Reading

“Jace hated it when other people were worried on his behalf. It made him feel like maybe there really was something to worry about.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Hate, People, Feeling

“The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood--
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Food, Drink, Thinking

“A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Money, Books, Lying

“The Montana sunset lay between the mountains like a giant bruise from which darkened arteries spread across a poisoned sky.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: The Diamond as Big as the Ritz & Other Stories

Mountain

“Saying you like "Piano Man" doesn't mean you like Billy Joel; it means you're willing to go to a piano bar if there's nothing else to do”

Chuck Klosterman (1972) Author, Columnist

“I don’t think man was meant to attain happiness so easily. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Happiness, Thinking, Fight

“It was completely fifth garde and completely silly and I loved it, because he wasn't afraid to be silly. It was like kissing him first - I could do whatever I wanted and not have to worry what he'd think of me.”

Kelley Armstrong The Gathering

Source: The Gathering

Love, Kiss, Thinking

“Keep looking below surface appearances. Don't shrink from doing so just because you might not like what you find.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Appearance

“Bigger room, darling. Like I said, we need a bigger room.”

Kelley Armstrong book Frostbitten

Source: Frostbitten

“Feelings are facts. Look straight at 'em and deal with 'em. Work it through, as honestly as you can. If God is anything like a middle-class white chick from the suburbs, which I admit is a long shot, it's what you do about what you feel that matters.”

Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow

Source: The Sparrow

God, Feeling

“All my friends seem to be smart arses. Don't ask me why. Like many things, it is what it is.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

“When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.”

Mem Fox (1946) Australian academic and children's writer known for picture books

Source: Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever

Parent, Reading

“Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

Mountain, Learning

“This won't stop her from getting elected," Shane said. "Stupider people get elected all the time. It's America. We love the sleazy. And the crazy." "I would like to think better of us," Claire said, "but yeah. You're right.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Bitter Blood

Love, People, Stupidity, Thinking

“Cliff said "damn" for me (I'm going to die). I didn't know he liked me enough to swear.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

“don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

God

“Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.”

Robert M. Pirsig (1928–2017) American writer and philosopher

People, Mountain

“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Address at Milton Academy, Massachusetts (17 May 1935)
1930s
Variant: Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

“Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

World

“You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."

"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

Hate, People, Effort, Help

“Dead was the gift that kept on giving. Dead, like
diamonds, was forever.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

Source: Song of Susannah

Dead

“We don't go to the ocean for anything as simple as happiness, do we? We
go there to feel alive. Like life, the ocean holds chance and change, grief and terror and beauty. It promises mortality, not peace.”

Eileen Wilks Tempting Danger

Source: Tempting Danger

Life, Happiness, Peace, Beauty

“Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Speed

“Once a month, some women act like men act all the time.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Women, Men, Time

“You're like the thief who isn't the least bit sorry he stole, but is terribly, terribly sorry he's going to jail. - Rhett Butler”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

“The past beats inside me like a second heart.”

John Banville The Sea

Source: The Sea (2005, ISBN 0-330-48328-5.

Past, Heart

“And suddenly, just like that, hope became knowledge. I was going to win. It was just a matter of when.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Hope, Knowledge

“the moment you don't feel like praying, get on your knees. And the moment you don't feel like reading your bible, you'd better get that Book open.”

Lori Wick American writer

Source: Where the Wild Rose Blooms

Books, Feeling, Reading

“Our eyelashes brushed like they would weave together by themselves, turning us into one wild thing. I say, “I think I missed you before I met you even.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Thinking

“I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.”

Bohumil Hrabal (1914–1997) Czech bookwriter and writer

Beauty

“Emma," said Cameron warningly. "The Clave won't like it."
The Clave was the Shadowhunter government. In Kit's experience, they didn't like anything.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“The secret of happiness is not doing what we like but in liking what we do.”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

Happiness, Secret

“Despite my staggering good looks, you actually don't like me that way…" (Jace)”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Way

“She is brave and strong and broken all at once. As she speaks it is as if her existence is no longer real to her in itself, more like a living epitaph to a life that was.”

Anna Funder (1966) Australian writer

Source: Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

Life, Strong

“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: Originality and initiative are what I ask for my country. For myself the originality need be no more than the freshness of a poem run in the way I have described: from delight to wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Its most precious quality will remain its having run itself and carried away the poet with it. Read it a hundred times: it will forever keep its freshness as a petal keeps its fragrance. It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.

“That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.”

Renata Adler (1938) American author, journalist and film critic

Source: Speedboat

People, Drink, Sleep

“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Bird, Flying

“She dropped her shyness like a nightgown, and in the liquid glare of sunlight on old boards she held up her hands-as if, in the terror of the upcoming skirmish, she had at last understood that she was beautiful. In her own way.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Beauty, Way

“She didn't quite know what the relationship was between lunatics and the moon, but it must be a strong one, if they used a word like that to describe the insane.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Strong

“Now you wouldn't believe me if I told you, but I could run like the wind blows. From that day on, if I was ever going somewhere, I was running!”

Winston Groom Forrest Gump

Source: Forrest Gump

“I was with them for all of it, but more like an echo than a participant.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Middle school is for being like everyone else; middle age is for being like yourself. (430)”

Victoria Moran (1950) American writer

Source: Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit

Age, School

“Sausage-Seller: You [demagogues] are like the fishers for eels; in still waters they catch nothing, but if they thoroughly stir up the slime, their fishing is good; in the same way it's only in troublous times that you line your pockets.”

Aristophanés The Knights

tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Kn.+864 ὅπερ γὰρ οἱ τὰς ἐγχέλεις θηρώμενοι πέπονθας. ὅταν μὲν ἡ λίμνη καταστῇ, λαμβάνουσιν οὐδέν· ἐὰν δ᾽ ἄνω τε καὶ κάτω τὸν βόρβορον κυκῶσιν, αἱροῦσι· καὶ σὺ λαμβάνεις, ἢν τὴν πόλιν ταράττῃς. Knights, line 864-867 Dialog aimed at the politician Cleon, symbolizing demagogues for the author. Knights (424 BC) Source: The Knights

Way, Fish, Water, Time

“That sounded about as likely as Apophis and Ra becoming Facebook buddies, but I decided not to say anything.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

“You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.”

Maya Angelou And Still I Rise

"Still I Rise"
Source: And Still I Rise (1978)

Hate

“I've always liked, someday the lamb will lay by the lion…. but it won't get much sleep.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Sleep

“Honey, I liked the Harry Potter movies, too, but that doesn’t mean I ran out and got a Dark Mark tattooed onto my left forearm like you did.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

Source: Blood Lite

Tattoo

“Time passes slowly. Nobody says a word, everyone lost in quiet reading. One person sits at a desk jotting down notes, but the rest are sitting there silently, not moving, totally absorbed. Just like me.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Time, Reading, Personality

“At least Kyle wasn't home. That would be a hard one to explain to his new roomate. Nobody liked a guy who kept blood in the fridge.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Guy, Home

“It’s really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There’s a whole commotion going on inside us.”

Jerry Spinelli book Stargirl

Source: Stargirl

“Catholics have more extreme sex lives because they're taught that pleasure is bad for you. Who thinks it's normal to kneel down to a naked man who's nailed to a cross? It's like a bad leather bar.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Pleasure, Sex, Thinking

“I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin.”

Raymond Chandler book Farewell, My Lovely

Source: Farewell, My Lovely

Girl

“Certificates from top US universities adorned the walls like tiger head in a hunter’s home.”

Chetan Bhagat book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Source: 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Home, Universe

“How can I describe how much I love you?
Is it even possible to describe a love like that? I don’t know, but as I
sit here with pen in hand, I know that I have to try.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Love

“A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood.”

Joanne Harris book Runemarks

Source: Runemarks

Tree

“A letter always seemed to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

“At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Ham On Rye (1982)
Source: Ham on Rye
Context: The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.

God, People, Age, Way

“I can't say for sure, because I have no experience, but -- well, is this what family is like? The feeling that everyone's connected, that with one piece missing the whole thing's broken?”

Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society

Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society

Family, Feeling

“It's like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn't move.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

Love, Feeling, Passion

“A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about him.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Sugar Daddy

Life, Time

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

Reading

“Last night you said you wanted to know what to expect so you could better select your attire. I told you we were going to visit a vampire in a Goth-den tonight. Why, then, Ms. Lane, do you look like a perky rainbow?”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Night

“Ugliness is an illusion, gentlemen. Like beauty. Like color. All depends on the light. The only reality is action.”

Karen Traviss book Star Wars Republic Commando: True Colors

Source: True Colors

Beauty, Color, Reality, Light

“In fact I was fairly certain there was no one in the entire world quite like Adrian Ivashkov.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

World

“Yet she likes complications. She wishes she could turn and say: I like people who unbalance me.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

People

“Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying… and every day on the balcony of the sea wings open fire is born and everything is blue again like morning.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Sea

“i am like a survivor
of the flood
walking through the streets
drenched with
God
surprised that all of the
drowned victims
are still walking and talking”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Source: , said the shotgun to the head.

God

“But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there and your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate. And all that cal. A terrible grahzny vonny world, really, O my brothers. And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: Fiction, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

World, Music, Star, Flowers

“If I feel ragged, my prep team seems in worse condition, knocking back coffee and sharing brightly colored little pills. As far as I can tell, they never get up before noon unless there's some sort of national emergency, like my leg hair.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Color, Feeling, Coffee

“Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use.”

David Byrne (1952) Scottish alternative rock musician and promoter of world music

Source: Bicycle Diaries

Future

“P. P. S. Just because I like you, it doesn't mean I still don't think you're an evil creature of the night. You are.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Thinking, Evil, Night

“I want to be like Gandhi and Martin Luther King and John Lennon but i want to STAY ALIVE.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

“Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Sleep, Tea

“Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk.”

Susanna Clarke book The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

Source: The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories

Wine

“We've begun to raise daughters more like sons… but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Courage, Daughters

“I just don't know," I said, my voice sounding bumby, not like mine, "how do you help someone who doesn't want your help. What do you do when you can't do anything?”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Help

“You feel a little bit lost right now about what to do with your life, a bit rudderless and oarless and aimless but that’s okay… That’s alright because we’re all meant to be like that at twenty-four.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Source: One Day

Life, Feeling

“ordinary eternal machinery, like the grinding of the stars”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

Star

“But magic is neither good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife. Is a knife evil? Only if the wielder is evil.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Evil

“Soon. She knew. Soon he would come visiting. Incarnadine and sweet and sad and broken. Just like her.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Sadness

“A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don't have a top for it.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Funny

“If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Change, Motivational, Happy, Attitude

“I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Learning, Personality

“I love Virginians because Virginians are all snobs and I like snobs. A snob has to spend so much time being a snob that he has little time left to meddle with you.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Love, Time

“Getting to a higher spiritual level is like increasing your credit score. You get a lot more points for sinning and repenting than if you have no credit history at all.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

History

“Like my mother said, you can't go back to holding hands”

Judy Blume (1938) American children's writer

Source: Forever . . .

“Now I know that our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

World, Suffering

“She warned me about Mr. Herondale, though, said he’d likely be rude to me, and familiar. She said I could be rude right back, that nobody would mind.”

“Someone ought to be rude to him. He’s rude enough to everyone else.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Time was something that moved in fits and starts for Magnus, dissipating like mist or dragging like chains, but when Alec was here, Magnus’s time seemed to fall into an easy rhythm with Alec’s, like two heartbeats falling into sync.”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Source: The Bane Chronicles

Time

“But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause, and I don't want anyone like that coming in here.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Imagination, Change

“And to the casual observer it looks like I have moved on since I go around wearing my little happy mask all day. I smile and laugh and carry on like my heart's still in one piece, but beneath it all, I am dying.”

Melody Carlson (1956) American writer

Source: Deep Green: Color Me Jealous

Happiness, Smile, Heart

“When Eve ate the apple her knowledge increased. But God liked dumb women so Paradise ceased. Gwen Goodnight. Her Work.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

Source: Faking It

Women, God, Knowledge

“I’m a word freak. I like words. I’ve always compared writing to music. That’s the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it’s like music.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Music, Way, Feeling

“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

No known citation to Marx. First appears unattributed in mid-1960s logic/computing texts as an example of the difficulty of machine parsing of ambiguous statements. Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?client=firefox-a&lr=&as_brr=0&q=%22fruit-flies%22+%22time+flies%22+banana&btnG=Search+Books&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=1900&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1970. The Yale Book of Quotations dates the attribution to Marx to a 9 July 1982 net.jokes post on Usenet. Misattributed

Time, Birthday

“No matter how many times Percy killed them and watched them crumble to powder, they just kept re-forming like large evil dust bunnies.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Evil, Time