| From novels After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell "I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in cushioning your insecurities with a system of belief that tells you, 'Don't worry. This may be your life but you're not in control. There is something or someone looking out for you - it's already organised.' It's all chance and choice, which is far more frightening." (page 85) All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque "Young men of iron. Young? None of us is more than twenty. But young? Young men? That was a long time ago. We are old now." (page 13) "'I tell you this: it is the most despicable thing of all to drag animals into a war.'" (page 45) "The differences brought about by education and upbringing have been almost completely blurred and are now barely recognisable. Sometimes those differences are an advantage in making the most of a given situation; but they have their disadvantages as well, because they give rise to inhibitions which then have to be overcome. It is as if we were once coins from various different countries; we�ve been melted down, and now we have all been restruck so that we are all the same. If you want to pick out differences you have to be able to examine the basic material very closely. We are soldiers, and only as an afterthought and in a strange and shamefaced way are we still individual human beings." (page 191) "�war is not about heroism, but about terror, either waiting for death, or trying desperately to avoid it, even if it means killing a complete stranger to do so, about losing all human dignity and values, about becoming an automaton; it is not about falling bravely and nobly for one�s country (�he was killed instantly� was usually a lie), but about soiling oneself in terror under heavy shellfire, about losing a leg, crawling blinded in no man�s land, or (in those telling hospital scenes) being wounded in every conceivable part of the body." (page 215, in the afterword by Brian Murdoch) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen "Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love." (page 25) "Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can." (page 103) "�listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself." (page 123) Tarka The Otter by Henry Williamson "For the animal they [farmers] hunt to kill in its season, or those other animals and birds they cause to be destroyed for the continuance of their pleasure in sport - which they believe to be natural - they have no pity; and since they lack this incipient human instinct, they misunderstand and deride it in others. Pity acts through the imagination, the higher light of the world, and imagination arises from the world of things, as a rainbow from the sun. A rainbow may be beautiful and heavenly, but it will not grow corn for bread." (pages 181/182) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom "When you are an outcast, even a tossed stone can be cherished." (page 44) "We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade." (page 149) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold "'A father's suspicion...' she began. 'Is as powerful as a mother's intuition.'" The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon "The female heart is a labyrinth of subtleties." (page 110) "The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul." (page 138) "...the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you've already stopped loving that person forever." (page 145) "There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite." (page 161) "Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen." (page 241) "There are worse prisons than words." (page 290) The Swallows Of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra "Music is the true breath of life. We eat so we won't starve to death. We sing so we can hear ourselves live." (page 84) "You can know all there is to know about life and mankind, but what do you really know about yourself?" (page 117) |