Quotes about place
page 19

“I keep telling this story - different people, different places, different times - but always you, always me, always this story, because a story is a tight rope between two worlds.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The Powerbook

People, World, Time

“Light blooms the brighter in the darkest places.”

Alison Croggon (1962) contemporary Australian poet, playwright and fantasy novelist

Source: The Naming

Light

“When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Source: The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Travel, Time

“I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer

Love, Learning

“The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.”

Italo Calvino The Uses of Literature

Source: The Uses of Literature

Nature

“Happiness, not in another place but this place… not for another hour, but this hour.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Happiness, Happy

“I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but
we don't recognize it. Maybe to recognize it, we have to believe in it.”

Umberto Eco book Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

“One heart fulfills all hearts.
All hearts lead to the same heart.
"Kingdom Hearts"
A place where the mighty hearts lives.
And where darkness is endlessly deep.”

Shiro Amano (1976) Japanese manga artist

Source: Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, Vol. 1

Heart

“It's a little place on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific? They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

Life, Memory

“Life itself is neither a good nor an evil: life is where good or evil find a place, depending on how you make it for them.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Essays: A Selection

Life, Evil, Dependency

“To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Happiness, World, Learning, Passion

“Let's scope the place out," he suggested, heading around the side of the building, "and be careful in the bushes."
"Why?" Amy asked.
"This is South Africa, dude," Dan replied. "Where cobras come from. And not the hot ones, like Ian.”

Peter Lerangis book The Viper's Nest

Source: The Viper's Nest

“If you should find yourself in a place that is indifferent to you and there is someone there that your spirit stretches to, then that person is kin.”

Helen Oyeyemi book The Opposite House

Source: The Opposite House

Personality, Indifference

“Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Beauty, Music, Suffering, Hurt

“In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”

Flannery O’Connor book Wise Blood

Source: Wise Blood

“Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the mext moment”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Housing

“She places her hands around my neck and rests her head on my shoulder. I can smell the sex on her, and my hope is that she can smell the love on me.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

Love, Hope, Sex

“Now take my hand and hold it tight.
I will not fail you here tonight,
For failing you, I fail myself
And place my soul upon a shelf
In Hell's library without light.
I will not fail you here tonight.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Source: The Book Of Counted Sorrows

Soul, Hell, Light

“There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Peace, Silence

“It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence (1920), Ch. 33

Life, People, Disease, Way

“Downworld?" Tessa echoed, puzzled. "Is that a place in London?"

"Never mind that," said Will. "I'm boasting of my investigative skills, and I would prefer to do it without interruption.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Source: The Third Policeman (1967)

“Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven and earth meet.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

God

“Collect adventures and experiences to reminisce about…go to far places, meet new people, eat exotic foods, enjoy all varieties of women, look on unfamiliar landscapes, see new things.”

Gary Jennings (1928–1999) Novelist

Women, People, Food

“There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Heart

“Although I have been through all that I have, I do not regret the many hardships I met, because it was they who brought me to the place I wished to reach.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“to know a piece of grass, you’ve got to see the ground that grew it. Maybe that’s why I remember every detail of that night, every inch of ground we covered, as I followed Zach to the place that had made him, seeing them both with fresh eyes.”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

Grass, Night

“And again, as always, after so many years we were still in the same place we always were.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“You deal with mythological stuff for a few years, you learn that paradises are usually places where you get killed.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Learning

“In the unceasing ebb and flow of justice and oppression we must all dig channels as best we may, that at the propitious moment somewhat of the swelling tide may be conducted to the barren places of life.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

Source: Twenty Years at Hull House

Life, Justice

“Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Intelligence

“The most important single thing that any Latter-day Saint ever does in this world is to marry the right person, in the right place, by the right authority.”

Bruce R. McConkie (1915–1985) American Mormon leader

World, Personality

“See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places”

Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash

Source: Snow Crash

World

“You can't plan for everything or you never get started in the first place.”

Jim Butcher book Changes

Source: Changes

“The last time I was at a supernatural shindig, I got poisoned and then everything there tried to kill me. So I burned the whole place to the ground.”

Jim Butcher book Cold Days

Source: Cold Days

Time

“Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Graduation

“It was a kingdom of dreams — a place where things would be just the way I wanted them to be.”

Judith McNaught book A Kingdom of Dreams

Source: A Kingdom of Dreams

Dreams, Way

“In spite of where we were, how we had gotten here and why we had come, I felt that at this moment of our lives, this place was exactly where we belonged. We were not drifting but rising, rising toward something right and of significance.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

“Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face”

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

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Time

“[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.”

Aristophanés The Knights

Source: The Knights

Nature

“Women need a reason for having sex, men just need a place”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Women, Men, Sex

“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Literature

“If you want to keep people subjugated, the last thing you place in their hands is a Bible. There's nothing more radical, nothing more revolutionary, nothing more subversive against injustice and oppression than the Bible.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

People

“The time is now, the place is here. Stay in the present. You can do nothing to change the past, and the future will never come exactly as you plan or hope for.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Hope, Change, Time, Past

“Cabin Fifteen does that to everyone," Annabeth warned. "If you ask me, this place is even more dangerous than the Ares cabin. At least with Ares, you can learn where the land mines are."
"Land mines?”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Learning

“I get tired of hearing it's a crummy world and that people are no damned good. What kind of talk is that? I know a place in Payette, Idaho, where a cook and a waitress and a manager put everything they've got into laying a chicken-fried steak on you.”

Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

People, World, Cooking

“There was love expressed in the places you usually forget to look.”

Ann Brashares book The Last Summer

Source: The Last Summer

Love, Forgetting

“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Stupidity

“Right now everything looks so strange to me, as if I don't belong here. It's me that's out of place. And the worst thing is that I feel there's somewhere I do belong, but I just can't find it.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Awakening

Feeling

“The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Way, Universe

“I sometimes have the feeling you've been here a long time, more than one lifetime, and that you've dwelt in private places none of the rest of us has even dreamed about.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

Dreams, Feeling, Time

“There has to be a moment when you choose happiness, when you stand up, raise your face towards the sun, and just grab joy and put it in a place where no one can ever take it away from you.”

Kris Radish (1953) American novelist

Source: The Shortest Distance Between Two Women

Happiness, Sun, Joy

“I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Books, Home, Sense

“For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

People, Music, Singing, Time

“Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

“The safest place to be during an earthquake would be in a stationary store.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

“Even the most powerful woman needs a place to unwind.”

Barbara Taylor Bradford (1933) British author

Source: Being Elizabeth

“Falling into Place:
deciding everything is falling into place perfectly as long as you don't get too picky about what you mean by place. Or perfectly.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“Die, very good, but do not make others die. Suicides like the one which is about to take place here are sublime, but suicide is restricted, and does not allow of extension; and so soon as it affects your neighbors, suicide becomes murder.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Suicide

“A jewel's just a rock put under enourmous heat and pressure. Extraordinary things are always hiding in places people never think to look.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

People, Thinking

“I wonder what it will be like when I leave this place.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Imagination can take you Places…. READ”

Brandon Mull Fablehaven

Source: Fablehaven

Imagination, Reading

“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”

Lance Armstrong book It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

"Back in the Saddle - An Essay by Lance Armstrong", as quoted in The Book of Action (2006) by Jeramy L. Patrick and Justin L. Helms, p. 68
Source: Armstrong, Lance. It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life. New York: Berkley Books, 2001

Pain, Motivational

“We'd thought that we were among the first humans to invade this basin, but humans had invaded everything, everywhere. They didn't have to walk into a place to invade it.”

John Marsden book Tomorrow, When the War Began

Source: Tomorrow, When the War Began

“Places that are empty of you are empty of life.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

Life

“Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

"Birches" (1920)
General sources
Source: Swinger of Birches
Context: I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

Love

“The past was always there, lived inside of you, and it helped to make you who you were. But it had to be placed in perspective. The past could not dominate the future.”

Barbara Taylor Bradford (1933) British author

Source: Unexpected Blessings

Past, Future, Help

“I will start out this evening with an assertion: fantasy is a place where it rains.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: Six Memos For The Next Millennium

“Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

Nelson Algren book A Walk on the Wild Side

In jail, Cross-Country Kline to Dove Linkhorn.
Source: A Walk on the Wild Side (1956)
Context: But blow wise to this, buddy, blow wise to this: Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own. Never let nobody talk you into shaking another man's jolt. And never you cop another man's plea. I've tried 'em all and I know. They don't work. / Life is hard by the yard, son. But you don't have to do it by the yard. By the inch it's a cinch. And money can't buy everything. For example: poverty.

Moms, Sleep

“And you're too nice," he added, above the lap-lap of the water and the patter of sand on the water-lily leaves. "I was relying on you being too jealous to let that demon near the place.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

Water

“You're a watchful guy. you know where that comes from?" I shook my head. "It comes from feeling out of place," he said. "Believe me. I know.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Guy, Feeling

“A fall from the third floor hurts as much as a fall from the hundredth. If I have to fall, may it be from a high place.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Hurt

“I felt a kind of vertigo, as if I were merely plunging from one world to another, and in each I arrived shortly after the end of the world had taken place.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

World

“In a way, whoever you know in a certain place defines that place for you.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: Margarettown

Way

“She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Life

“I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.”

Alexander McCall Smith The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Source: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Personality

“See, she goes places when she reads. I know all about that. When I'm reading, wherever I am, I'm always somewhere else.”

Rebecca Wells book Little Altars Everywhere

Source: Little Altars Everywhere

Reading

“Love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places

yes is a world
& in this world of yes live
(skillfully curled)
all worlds”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Love, World, Peace

“You just click your heels and think there's no place like being pwned.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Pale Demon

Thinking

“Favorite Places:
I'm not that good at being a tourist because I'm always looking at the way the light shines in your hair or the way your dress opens to the wind & my favorite places in the world are places filled with you.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

World, Way, Light

“You wouldn't have taken Rose to such a place, would you?"

"Of course not, but she is a little girl, and I'm-"

"My life", he interrupted quietly. "You're my entire life. If anything ever happens to you, Holly, there is nothing left for me.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Where Dreams Begin

Life, Girl

“In a relationship the details are everything because they remind you - just when you need to be reminded the most - why you fell in love with someone in the first place.”

Mike Gayle (1970) British author

Source: His 'N' Hers

Love

“It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal… one that does not place its affections thoughtlessly.”

Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) French writer

Friendship, Cats, Animals

“It was the last that remained of a past whose annihilation had not taken place because it was still in a process of annihilation, consuming itself from within, ending at every moment but never ending its ending.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Past

“You oughta be thankful, a whole heaping lot,
For the places and people you're lucky you're not!”

Dr. Seuss book Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?

The last sentence of this statement is often misquoted as "You oughta be thankful, a whole heaping lot, / For the people and places you're lucky you're not!"
Source: Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? (1973)
Context: It’s a troublesome world. All the people who're in it
are troubled with troubles almost every minute.
You oughta be thankful, a whole heaping lot,
For the places and people you're lucky you're not!

People

“I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.”

Anna Funder (1966) Australian writer

Source: Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

Freedom, Training

“When you reach my age, you realize you couldn't have done things very much better or much worse than you did them in the first place.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Age, Motivational

“I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Archilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me.”

Thomas Browne (1605–1682) English polymath

“The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Variant: The most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that.
Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“Maybe this was what Aunt Peg meant all along - returning was a weird thing. You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe our what came before.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Time

“We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.”

Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter

Source: Letter to My Daughter

Feeling, Home

“She's tired and leans her head on his shoulder, which is the resting place for all their heads, but when Justine and Siobhan and Francesca use his body so shamelessly he doesn't feel the need to turn his head and press his mouth against their hair.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: The Piper's Son

Feeling

“There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

The Bridge Across Forever (1984)
Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

Learning

“Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

People, World

“The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves.”

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

This Business of Living (1935-1950)
Source: Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950
Context: When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves.

“Perhaps she was just looking for love in the wrong places. In all the safe places. What if love was not safe at all?”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: Then Comes Seduction

Love