Beth E > Beth's Quotes

“There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there are few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“You don't sound like a librarian," she said.
"I'm on vacation," Jacqueline laughed. "Well, I supposed there is an image, isn't there? But stereotypes are awfully misleading. there are typical librarians, but not all librarians are typical. Any more than any other profession.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Seventh Sinner

“When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.”
― Robin McKinley, Spindle's End

“It had been awful, but I hadn't quit. I had persisted. In battle I had won.”
― Kimberly Brubaker Bradley, The War That Saved My Life

“The trouble with you people is that you don't laugh enough.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“A towel, [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“I was just telling Claire about a guy I met in bread class. I hate him, but he could be my soul mate.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

“This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“So long, and thanks for all the fish.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Adventures are never fun while you're having them.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?”
― C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”

“What you describe is how it happens to everyone: magic does slide through you, and disappear, and come back later looking like something else. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but where your magic lives will always be a great dark space with scraps you fumble for. You must learn to sniff them out in the dark.”
― Robin McKinley, Spindle's End

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Goats," said Maxwell Hyde, "are a special case. Mad as hatters, all of them.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, The Merlin Conspiracy

“If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“There is no such thing as freedom on earth," he said. "Only different kinds of bondages. And comparative bondages. YOU think you are free now because you've escaped from a peculiarly unbreakable kind of bondage. But are you? You love me - THAT'S a bondage.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“Isn't it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up? Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid. That would be worth the pain.”
― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

“God's Final Message to His Creation:
'We apologize for the inconvenience.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Very senior librarians, however, once they have proved themselves worthy by performing some valiant act of librarianship, are accepted into a secret order and are taught the raw arts of survival beyond the Shelves”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“Out of habit, she stopped by the bookshelf in the living room to see if there was a paperback that she could stuff into her pocket for emergencies — you never knew when you might need a book to entertain and comfort and distract you in the day's empty places”
― Emily Croy Barker, The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic

“Ah, but life is like that! It does not permit you to arrange and order it as you will. It will not permit you to escape emotion, to live by the intellect and by reason! You cannot say, 'I will feel so much and no more.' Life, Mr. Welman, whatever else it is, is not reasonable. [Hercule Poirot]”
― Agatha Christie, Sad Cypress

“To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived..”
― Agatha Christie, Sad Cypress

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
― Rainer Maria Rilke