Quotable Quotes

@quotablebookquotes

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People move around so much in the world, things get lost.

Emma Donoghue, Room

I've seen the world and I'm tired now.

Emma Donoghue, Room

Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.

Emma Donoghue, Room

Feel the splendid isolation, the momentary step into timelessness.

Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

Without a future, the mind turned back in on itself. That’s not dementia. One might even say it’s the only rational response to the inevitable.

Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

Most things are both true and absurd.

Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

At his age, it can be overwhelming and painful to harbor a thought accompanied by too much nostalgia. Not that he wanted to. Mabel, in her final years, had stopped listening to music. The songs of her teenage years brought her back to people and feelings of that time - people she could never see again and sensations that were no longer coming. It was too much for her. There are people who can manage such things. There are those of us who can no longer walk, but can close our eyes and remember a summer hike through a field, or the feeling of cool grass beneath our feet, and smile. Who still have the courage to embrace the past, and give it life and a voice in the present. But Mabel was not one of those people. Maybe she lacked that very form of courage. Or maybe her humanity was so complete, so expansive, that she would be crushed by her capacity to imagine the love that was gone.

Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

He expresses himself not in a torrent of words and ideas and disruptions, revelations and setbacks, but through an ever-expanding capacity to face what comes next.

Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

You know the Norwegian police? They're a bunch of pussies. They don't carry guns, just like the English. But they stay after things for years and years, nagging and nagging. They're like herpes. You think you're rid of them, and then, when you're a little stressed out, boom! In the end they catch all the killers. They exhaust their prey into submission.

Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

Those of us with the courage to open ourselves to that much love and not fear it - who can give joy to a dying child until the very end without withdrawing to save ourselves - those are our saints. It is not the martyrs. It is never the martyrs.

Derek Miller, Norwegian by Night

Everyone gets killed in the shower. Don't you go to the movies? Psycho. Dead in shower. The Mexican in No country for Old Men. Dead in shower. Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath. Almost dead in shower, or in the bath, anyway. But she did that thing with her toe and got out OD. Still the shower, though...Glen Close in Fatal Attraction. Dead in shower. John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Very dead in shower. But never closets. I can't think of anyone shot in a closet. This is why I hide in closets.

Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

Only the educated stop to look for words - having enough to occasionally misplace them.

Derek B. Miller, Norwegian by Night

Show the other side, the one that gets people out of bed the next morning, makes them scratch and scrape and fight for their lives because someone is telling them that they're going to be okay.

Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

There comes a point when you have to realize that the sum of all your blood, sweat, and tears will ultimately amount to zero.

Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

To know is always better, no matter what the answer might be.

Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

They didn't break me. I broke myself.

Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

When I believe in my ability to do something, there is no such word as no.

Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

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