Quote Jot

A journal, of sorts. A collection of inspirational written words.

[bookmania]

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, and not what someone tells you you should read.

Joyce Carol Oates (via bookmania)

[laurenthelibrarian]

But if she hadn’t been such a cracking radio operator and been promoted so quickly, it’s not likely we’d have become friends even in wartime, because British officers don’t mingle with the Lower Ranks. (I don’t believe it for a minute– that we wouldn’t have become friends somehow– that an unexploded bomb wouldn’t have gone off and blown us into the same crater, or that God himself wouldn’t have come along and knocked our heads together in a flash of green sunlight. But it wouldn’t have been likely.)

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (via laurenthelibrarian)

[greatpiraticalrumbustification]

I wonder how many piles of paper like mine are lying around Europe, the only testament to our silenced voices, buried in filing cabinets and steamer trunks and cardboard boxes as we disappear - as we vanish into the night and the fog?

Code Name Verity, Elizabeth Wein (via greatpiraticalrumbustification)

[theinwardsources]

It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, You stupid ass, just wait a minute and she’ll open her eyes! Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time! But they always do.

Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity (via theinwardsources)

[quotemybooks]

And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true; when I read it, when I read what Julie’s written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I’m reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She’s right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can’t be landed, stuck in the climb-alive, alive, ALIVE.

Code name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (via quotemybooks)

[oldwordsbest]

But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France–a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will always be unflyable, stuck in the climb.

Code Name Verity– Elizabeth Wein (via oldwordsbest)

[quoted-books]

I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can’t believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant. But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.

Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity (via quoted-books)

[quote-jot]

Their eyes met at the same instant moment, Therese glancing up from a box she was opening, and the woman just turning her head so she looked directly at Therese. She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist, her eyes were grey, colorless, yet dominant as light or fire, and, caught by them, Therese could not look away. She heard the customer in front of her repeat a question, and Therese stood there, mute. The woman was looking at Therese, too, with a preoccupied expression, as if half her mind were on whatever is was she meant to buy here, and though there were a number of salesgirls between them, There felt sure the woman would come to her, Then, Then Therese saw her walk slowly towards the counter, heard her heart stumble to catch up with the moment it had let pass, and felt her face grow hot as the woman came nearer and nearer.

Patricia Highsmith, Carol  [Formerly: The Price of Salt]

[quote-jot]

Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale-white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered.

Patricia Highsmith, Carol [Formerly: The Price of Salt] 

[inquisitorshepardcommander]

Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that it was a living hell. It wasn’t. But it sure as hell wasn’t heaven, either.

Death, The Book Thief [Markus Zusak] (via inquisitorshepardcommander)

[yesthatbookishnol-deactivated20]

He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera (via yesthatbookishnol)

[bookmania]

That’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.

Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (via bookmania)

[writerswritecompany]

Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit that they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

Nikki Giovanni (via amandaonwriting)

[quote-jot]

Five minutes before Julian arrived, they might be slouched in the living room -- curtains drawn, dinner simmering on chafing dishes in the kitchen, everyone tugging at collars and dull-eyed with fatigue -- but the instant the doorbell rang their spines would straighten, conversation would snap to life, the very wrinkles would fall from their clothes.

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

[quote-jot]

There was a horrible, erratic thumping in my chest, as if a large bird was trapped inside my ribcage and beating itself to death.

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

[purplebuddhaproject]

I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for.

Jonathan Safron Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close  (via thatkindofwoman)

[radicalselfloverevolution-deact]

Robert Frost