| Quotable Reads: A Thread for Memorable Book Quotes | - Page 5

"For do but note a wild and wanton herd

Or race of youthful and unhandled colts

Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,

Which is the hot condition of their blood,

If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,

Or any air of music touch their ears,

You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,

Their savage eyes turned to a modest gaze

By the sweet power of music: Therefore, the poet

Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods,

Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage

But music for the time doth change his nature." - William

Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Reputation is invaluable. Freedom and independence are invaluable. Family and friends are invaluable. Being loved by those who you want to love you is invaluable. Happiness is invaluable. And your best shot at keeping these things is knowing when it’s time to stop taking risks that might harm them. Knowing when you have enough.

Recent history is often the best guide to the future, because it’s more likely to include important conditions that are relevant to the future.

There is nothing as bad as war. . . . When people realize how bad it is they cannot do anything to stop it because they go crazy. There are some people who never realize.

“It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Ready or Not - Cara Bastone

"Most people are self-centered. They understand the world only through their experiences. Whatever happens around them, they ask, What does that mean for me? But then there are a select few who are other-centered. And when things happen around them, they ask themselves, What does this mean for everybody? And that sounds like Shep."

"It's a lot of motherhood too. Moving from being self-centered to other-centered. A huge chunk of motherhood is realizing that your children are little bits of your own self out there eating cereal straight from the box and learning to pay their own taxes and wondering whether or not now is the right time to adopt a cat."

"That's what it means to be other-centered? To see the web? To treat everyone like they're somebody's favorite person on earth?"

"I am just really, really not alone. So you don't have to worry that I am. This isn't... all on you. If you can't be here. You can't be here. And I'll be all right. Just, be well, okay? I wish you all the best. I really do."

This isn't all about me. It isn't all about Ethan, or Willa, or Shep, or even the baby. It's a web and - God, what a perfect system because - each of us is somebody's favorite.

He was telling me, all those months ago, that he wanted me. Infinitely kind words in a dark moment. I'll never leave you whispered in a secret code that he was content for me to never solve.

That's what wanting without taking looks like.

Other-centered as he is, maybe he's been waiting for me to do the taking.

Is there any compliment higher than someone dropping everything for you?

I face-plant into a new reality. One where taking a single step towards Shep means taking every step towards Shep.

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Hello, Stranger - Katharine Center

But it's also true that the most generic faces are consistently rated as the best-looking.

Like, the more you look like a composite of everyone, the more we like you.

You're not just your face, is what I mean. But man, it sure is a big part of you.

For me, right now, everyone felt like a stranger. Even me.

Dogs were so good at forgiveness.

"Seeming okay and being okay are not the same thing."

"Close enough."

"In fact," she said, leaning in a little, "they might cancel each other out."

"Are you saying I should just walk around wailing and weeping?"

"I'm saying," she said, "that it's better to be real than fake."

It was a strange thought. Who on earth could you trust if not yourself?

"What's confirmation bias?"

"It means that we tend to think what we think we're going to think."

"If I think everything is terrible, then everything will be terrible?"

She nodded, like, Bingo.

Seeing the world differently helps you see things not just that other people can't - but that you yourself never could if you weren't so lucky. It lets you make your own rules. Color outside your own lines. Allow yourself another way of seeing.

We're all just muddling through, after all. We're all just doing the best we can. We're all struggling with our own struggles. Nobody has the answers. And everybody, deep down, is a little bit lost.

We're all so limited and disappointing and so, so wrong. Much of the time. Maybe even most of the time. We're all so steeped in our own confirmation bias. We're all so busy seeing what we expect to see.

But we have our moments, too.

Moments when we see that tire blowout and stop to help. Moments when we pay for the person behind us in the drive-through. Or offer up our seat to a stranger. Or compliment someone's earrings. Or realize we were wrong. Or apologize.

Sometimes we really are the best versions of ourselves. I see that about us. And I'm determined to keep seeing that about us. Because that really might be the truest thing I'll ever know: The more good things you look for, the more you find.

I dont remember if I shared these quotes before, so sharing them now. All of them are from All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover.

"What's the secret to a perfect marriage?" Our marriage hasn't been perfect. No marriage is perfect. There were times when she gave up on us. There were even more times when I gave up on us. The secret to our longetivity is that we never gave up at the same time.

In our defense, it's hard to admit that a marriage might be over when the love is still there. People are led to believe that a marriage ends only when the love has been lost. When anger replaces happiness. When contempt replaces bliss. But Graham and I aren't angry at each other. We're just not the same people we used to be.

Sometimes when people change, it;s not always noticeable in a marriage, because the couple changes together, in the same direction. But sometimes people change in opposite directions.

I haven't gone anywhere. I've been here this whole time. But you can't see me because you're still searching for someone I used to be. I'm sorry I'm no longer who I was back then. Maybe I'll get better. Maybe I won't. But a good husband loves his wife through the good and the bad times. A good husband stands at his wife's side through sickness and health, Graham. A good husband--a husband who truly loves his wife--wouldn't cheat on her and then blame his infidelity on the fact that he's lonely.

"When the trees saw me, they made as if to turn in my direction. A puff of wind came across the valley from the distant snows. A long-tailed blue magpie took alarm and flew noisily out of an oak tree. The cicadas were suddenly silent. But the trees remembered me. They bowed gently in the breeze and beckoned me nearer, welcoming me home. Three pines, a straggling oak and a wild cherry. I went among them and acknowledged their welcome with a touch of my hand against their trunks—the cherry’s smooth and polished; the pine’s patterned and whorled; the oak’s rough, gnarled, full of experience. He’d been there longest, and the wind had bent his upper branches and twisted a few, so that he looked shaggy and undistinguished. But like the philosopher who is careless about his dress and appearance, the oak has secrets, a hidden wisdom. He has learnt the art of survival!" - Ruskin Bond, No Man is an Island: Stories of Friendship and Bonding

Quotes from Betrayed by Dr. Rebecca Sharp:

“Yes, I was broken once. Betrayed. And it left deep scars.” I swallowed through the tightness in my throat. “But I’m not that woman anymore. I’m human… and humans heal.”

“Sometimes, it’s the smartest people who have the hardest time accepting what’s best for them,” ”

We could be so good - Cat Sebastian

"So, he sends me any queer book that comes his way. He means well, but these books all end with someone dead or in a lunatic asylum"

He feels as if he's been turned inside out, as if he just learned that a part of his heart is on the outside of his body, in the possession of somebody else entirely.

He's queer. The thoughts going through his head are inescapably queer, and so is he. Even if he never does anything about it, he's still queer.

But Nick is tired of dead queers. Nick's tired of people like him having to suffer in order to provide the right kind of ending. He's done his time with shame and doesn't want any more of it.

He does try. A little. He doesn't want to think of the possibilities that exist in a world where he returns that glance. Everything is simpler and safer if he doesn't think about that, and Andy has long since made peace with being the kind of person who doesn't swim against the current. He has enough trouble without borrowing any.

"I want you to be safe. I need you to be safe, Nick. I can't function in a world that won't let you be safe." And that's too bad, because Nick has never heard of that world.

Fear of exposure has been a constant in his life' he doesn't know how to stop being afraid any more than he knows how to stop his heart from beating. Sometimes he feels like the fear is crowding out everything else, though. He wants the good things in his life to take up the space they deserve, but he doesn't know how to go about doing that, or even if it's possible.

If every queer person starts out feeling defective and ashamed, how many ever find a way to stop?

Yeah being queer isn't exactly easy. Hiding is hard. Knowing what his family thinks of him is hard. But then there's Andy - loving him, and letting Andy love him back, are the easiest things he's ever done.