Quotes about tell
page 15

“Telling someone about what a symbol means is like telling someone how music should make them feel.”

Dan Brown book The Da Vinci Code

Source: The Da Vinci Code

Music, Feeling

“Just ask how I'm feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you.

But no one does.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

Feeling

“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

“Percy grunted. ‘Probably something to do with that creep Octavian. Maybe he was so bad at telling the future that he broke Apollo’s powers.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Future

“Yeah, tell me I’m a bottle of single malt scotch, she thought. That’s the way to my heart.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Nightfall

Way, Heart

“And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Blue Iris: Poems and Essays

Life, Money, Truth

“Life forgets me but will not let me forget
Holds me down and tells me that I'm free.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: See A Grown Man Cry/Now Watch Him Die

Life, Forgetting

“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

“When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

“Let me tell you something straight off. This is a love story, but not like any you've ever heard. The boy and the girl are far from innocent. Dear lives are lost. And good doesn't win.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Love, Girl, Boy

“Um, Dr. Alexander, there’s a couple out here who say they’re related to you. They…um…they’re biker people. (Nurse)
Hey, Julian. Tell Attila the Hun here that we’re okay so we can come and ooh and aah over the babies. (Eros)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Fantasy Lover

Source: Fantasy Lover

People, Baby

“I know there are monsters on this earth,' said Tessa. 'You cannot tell me otherwise. I have seen them.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

People, Way, Science

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

Robert Frost The Road Not Taken

1910s
Source: "The Road Not Taken", st. 4 (1916)

Age, Travel

“… because people who talk about their dreams are actually trying to tell you things about themselves they'd never admit in normal conversation. It's a way for people to be honest without telling the truth.”

Chuck Klosterman book Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

Source: Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

People, Truth, Dreams, Way

“Feeling is not selective, I keep telling you that. You can’t feel pain, you aren’t gonna feel anything else, either.”

Judith Guest Ordinary People

Source: Ordinary People

Pain, Feeling, Depressing

“Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.”

“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”

“The way you tell it, it is.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Truth, Way

“Goodness, my nose is enormous,' she exclaimed. 'Why didn't anyone tell me?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“I tell myself that I know you,
and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Thinking

“I’ve had a tense couple of days. And I’ve got to tell you, burning someone’s face off sounds like a great way to relax.”

Jim Butcher book Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Way

“What is good, Phædrus, and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 30
The quote is from section 258d of the dialogue Phædrus (tr. Benjamin Jowett).
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Context: A single thought begins to grow in his mind, extracted from something he read in the dialogue Phædrus. "And what is written well and what is written badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?"
What is good, Phædrus, and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?

“It’s okay,” I tell her.
“It is okay to be happy”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Happiness

“I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.”

Marguerite Duras book The Lover

Source: The Lover

Beauty, Thinking

“You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything's okay and you tell them
you're just tired.
And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Smile

“Even though she had been warned, she tripped over the bike. She probably tripped because she'd been warned and was telling herself not to trip over the bike. She did that sometimes. It was often easier not to know what obstacles were in the way.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Way

“Refills are free,” the waitress tells us with a frown, like she’s hoping we’re not the kind of people who ask for endless refills. I am already pretty sure we are exactly those people.”

Holly Black book Black Heart

Source: Black Heart

People, Hope

“When to people tell the same lie…"
"They are working together," Will finished”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess

People, Lie

“When someone tells me "no," it doesn't mean I can't do it, it simply means I can't do it with them.”

Karen E. Quinones Miller (1958) American writer

“So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

God, Hope, Understanding, Chance

“You could tell by the way he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him.”

John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces

Source: A Confederacy of Dunces

School, Way, Time

“Where is the woman who has ever really torn from her heart the image that has been once fixed in it by a true love? Books tell us that such unearthly creatures have existed - but what does our own experiences say in answer to books?”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

Love, Books, Heart

“I'd been told that he had been created-literally created-just for me, as my "perfect other half." Let me tell you-if Dylan was my perfect other half, then i needed to give my first half a seriouis look-see.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Angel

Perfection

“She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.”

Jodi Picoult Plain Truth

Source: Plain Truth

Love

“I belong to you. You could do anything you wanted with me and I would let you. You could ask anything of me and I'd break myself trying to make you happy. My heart tells me this is the best and greatest feeling I have ever had.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Happiness, Feeling, Heart

“It was a lie but he believed in telling lies to people. Truth telling and medicine just didn't go together except in dire emergencies, if then.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

People, Truth, Lie

“A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Men, Soul, Star, Birth

“You’ll tell yourself anything you have to, to pretend that you’re still the one in control.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

“Again it might have been the American tendency in travel. One goes, not so much to see but to tell afterward.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Travel

“Tonight, I've finally learned to tell fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose fantasy.”

David Henry Hwang M. Butterfly

Source: M. Butterfly

Reality, Learning

“The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001)
Source: Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
Context: Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist independently, it is the lines drawn between them—drawn by the act of walking for cultural purposes—that makes them a constellation. Constellations are not natural phenomena but cultural impositions; the lines drawn between stars are like paths worn by the imagination of those who have gone before. This constellation called walking has a history, the history trod out by all those poets and philosophers and insurrectionaries, by jaywalkers, streetwalkers, pilgrims, tourists, hikers, mountaineers, but whether it has a future depends on whether those connecting paths are traveled still.

Star, Reading, Drawing

“Lady, right now you could tell me to throw myself under a bus to make you happy, and I’d oblige you. (Xypher)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Happiness

“Calvin: Know what I pray for?
Hobbes: What?
Calvin: The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't, and the incapacity to tell the difference.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

28 Aug 92
The Days Are Just Packed
Source: The Essential Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury

Change

“Sometimes when I'm alone, I take the pearl from where it lives in my pocket and try to remember the boy with the bread, the strong arms that warded off nightmares on the train, the kisses in the arena. To make myself put a name to the thing I've lost. But what's the use? It's gone. He's gone. Whatever existed between us is gone. All that's left is my promise to kill Snow. I tell myself this ten times a day.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Katniss (p. 195)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

Boy, Kiss, Strong, Time

“I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack”

Tana French book The Likeness

Source: The Likeness

Love, People, Learning

“Tell it to the cleaning lady on Monday. Because you'll be dust on Monday. Because I'll be pulverizing you sometime over the weekend. And the cleaning lady… cleans up… dust. She dusts. And she has weekends off, so… Monday. Right?”

Bryan Lee O'Malley (1979) Artist

Source: Scott Pilgrim, Volume 3: Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness

“Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them.”

Isobelle Carmody book Greylands

Source: Greylands

Truth

“Tell me, if I take you to my room and put you in my bed, what do you think would happen?"

"I can draw you a diagram. Hint: I'm slot B, and you're tab A.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

Thinking, Drawing

“I tell so many lies, sweetheart," he said. "which one specifically?”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

“You list the dead. You tell the stories of the past. You write about the catastrophes and the massacres. What about the living, Finnikin? Who honors them?”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Past, Dead

“Who… who are you?' I asked at last. It was true. I had left a body in the park, but seriously, what was I supposed to do? Drag him back to my hotel and tell my bellhop my friend had had too much to drink?”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Drink

“I want to hug you. And I want to tear your gods-damned head off. Both at once."

"Ah," said Locke. "Near as I can tell, that’s the definition of 'family' right there.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

God, Family, Tear

“One of the drawbacks to life is that it contains moments when one is compelled to tell the truth”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Life, Truth

“He shook his head in wonder. "You are magnificent."
"I keep telling everyone that," she said with a nonchalant shrug, "But you seem to be the only one to believe me.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: To Sir Phillip, With Love

“I've read that if an avalanche buries you and you're lying there underneath all that snow, you can't tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig yourself to your own demise.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Way, Lying, Reading

“Anything you need, you tell him and he'll get it for you. If he offends you in any way, let me know and I'll kill him when I get up.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Night Pleasures

Source: Night Pleasures

Way

“People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

People

“My dad said I did the right thing. I hope I did, but it's hard to tell sometimes.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Hope

“Tell me a story of deep delight.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

“All we have is the story we tell.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

“Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

The Man in Bogota

Question

“Half of my heart's got a real good imagination, half of my heart's got you… Half of my hearts got a right mind to tell you that half of my heart won't do.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Half of My Heart
Song lyrics, Battle Studies (2009)
Source: John Mayer - Battle Studies
Context: I was born in the arms of imaginary friends,
Free to roam, made a home out of everywhere I've been.
Then you come crashing in, like the realest thing,
Trying my best to understand all that your love can bring.Oh half of my heart's got a grip on the situation;
Half of my heart takes time.
Half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you
That I can't keep loving you (can't keep loving you)
Oh, with half of my heart.

Imagination, Heart

“And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Oskar's grandmother
"My Feelings" (p. 314)
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I said, I want to tell you something She said, you can tell me tomorrow I had never told her how much I loved her. She was my sister. We slept in the same bed. There was never a right time to say it. It was always unnecessary. I thought about waking her. But it was unnecessary. There would be other nights. And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary. I love you. Grandma.

Love