Kindlehighlight Quotes

But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?

~ Markus Zusak

You also know you’re surrendered when you don’t react to criticism and rush to defend yourself. Surrendered hearts show up best in relationships. You don’t edge others out, you don’t demand your rights, and you aren’t self-serving when you’re surrendered.

~ Rick Warren

All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened, if that’s what you mean.” He took another slow drink, then smiled again, his bright eyes dancing. “More or less. You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You’re my change of skin / my summer-winter-fall / I spring to follow you / this loss is beautiful.

~ Maggie Stiefvater

that love is the most powerful force in the world. That love can do anything.

~ Cassandra Clare

Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people--that's in your hands.

~ Leo Tolstoy

You think you want love, Mary. You think it is this beautiful gift that does nothing but fill you and make you whole. But you are wrong. Love can be cruel and ugly. It can become dark and cause the deepest pain.

~ Carrie Ryan

I felt no shame in these activities, because I understood what almost no one else seemed to grasp: that there was only an infinitesimal difference, a difference so small that it barely existed except as a figment of the human imagination, between working in a tall green glass building on Park Avenue and collecting litter in a park. In fact, there may have been no difference at all.

~ Jennifer Egan

What do you know of poetry?” Ambrose said without bothering to turn around. “I know a limping verse when I hear it,” I said. “But this isn’t even limping. A limp has rhythm. This is more like someone falling down a set of stairs. Uneven stairs. With a midden at the bottom.” “It is a sprung rhythm,” he said, his voice stiff and offended. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” “Sprung?” I burst out with an incredulous laugh. “I understand that if I saw a horse with a leg this badly ‘sprung,’ I’d kill it out of mercy, then burn its poor corpse for fear the local dogs might gnaw on it and die.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

I had them all fooled into believing I was normal and well-adjusted, a rock of sensibility who could always be counted on to have a positive attitude.

~ Sara Zarr

Isaac Asimov's remark about the infantilism of pseudoscience is just as applicable to religion: 'Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold.' It is astonishing, moreover, how many people are unable to understand that 'X is comforting' does not imply 'X is true'.

~ Richard Dawkins

Happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, love... All these things work the same way. The more you search for them, the less likely you are to find them.

~ Patrick Rhone

His face and arms are so artfully disguised as to be invisible. I kneel beside him. “I guess all those hours decorating cakes paid off.” Peeta smiles. “Yes, frosting. The final defense of the dying.

~ Suzanne Collins

Because something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences.

~ Suzanne Collins

I realize that sometimes death comes before you expect it. That while we are rarely prepared for our friends, family and loved ones to die, we are never prepared for our own deaths. Never prepared to reconcile our own regrets.

~ Carrie Ryan

Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.

~ Jules Verne

I failed math twice, never fully grasping probability theory. I mean, first off, who cares if you pick a black ball or a white ball out of the bag? And second, if you’re bent over about the color, don’t leave it to chance. Look in the damn bag and pick the color you want.

~ Janet Evanovich

Maybe he didn’t really encourage me to do things, but he didn’t prevent me from doing them either. But after a while, I didn’t do things because I didn’t want him to think different about me. But the thing is, I wasn’t being honest. So, why would I care whether or not he loved me when he didn’t really even know me?

~ Stephen Chbosky

There’s a coward and a fool, and both of them are you, My heart is cracked and broken, but yours is frozen through.

~ Jay Bell

Almost everybody I know has died,” Grandma said. “Bunch of wimps.

~ Janet Evanovich

Meditation is the only intentional, systematic human activity which at bottom is about not trying to improve yourself or get anywhere else, but simply to realize where you already are.

~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

Never make a decision until you have to.

~ Randy Pausch

When God looks at you, he doesn’t see you; he sees the One who surrounds you. That means that failure is not a concern for you. Your victory is secure.

~ Max Lucado

I’d heard he had started a fistfight in one of the seedier local taverns because someone had insisted on saying the word “utilize” instead of “use.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

Teach me how to fly, my beautiful butterfly.

~ Jay Bell

Donny recovered herself. “Dude, that was the seventh sign of the apocalypse. I’m so not going to class on the last day of the world.

~ Gwen Hayes

Seems to me- Lee said, feeling for the words, seems to me the place you fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed....

~ Philip Pullman

(My proudest moment as a child was the time I beat my uncle Pierre at Scrabble with the seven-letter word FARTING.)

~ Tina Fey

Though you see nothing, he is acting.

~ Max Lucado

For a split second longer she stood motionless. Then, somehow, she had caught at the front of his shirt and pulled him toward her. His arms went around her, lifting her almost out of her sandals, and then he was kissing her—or she was kissing him, she wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter. The feel of his mouth on hers was electric; her hands gripped his arms, pulling him hard against her. The feel of his heart pounding through his shirt made her dizzy with joy. No one else’s heart beat like Jace’s did, or ever could.

~ Cassandra Clare

I wasn’t a fabulous cook. I didn’t have a boyfriend, much less a husband. And I wasn’t a big financial success. I could live with all those failings as long as I knew that once in a while I looked really hot.

~ Janet Evanovich

I don’t know what boldness came over me, but the resolute heaviness of Dash’s demeanor threatened to crush my soul. My pinky finger crept over and nestled against his, for comfort. Like a magnet, his pinky finger latched onto and intertwined with mine. I like magnets a whole lot.

~ Rachel Cohn

The beauty of the human soul Is not the pretty face. It’s found within the heart and hands Of those who look — and stay.

~ Laura Greenwald

The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.

~ Jennifer Egan

I noticed the plants growing around me. Tall with leaves like arrowheads. Blossoms with three white petals. I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the soft mud, and I pulled up handfuls of the roots. Small, bluish tubers that don’t look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato. “Katniss,” I said aloud. It’s the plant I was named for. And I heard my father’s voice joking, “As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.

~ Suzanne Collins

A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.

~ Robert B. Cialdini

The feeling I have reminds me of New Year’s Eve, when the countdown is coming and I’m not quite sure whether to grab my camera or just live in the moment. Usually I grab the camera and later regret it when the picture doesn’t turn out. Then I feel enormously let down and think to myself that the night would have been more fun if it didn’t mean quite so much, if I weren’t forced to analyze where I’ve been and where I’m going.

~ Emily Giffin

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

~ Markus Zusak

Don’t ever get old. With each year that passes, the old Viking idea of jumping off a cliff to one’s death looks better and better. The only thing to hope for is that you get so senile that you think you’re twenty years old again. That would be fun to relive.

~ Camilla Läckberg