Lucy’s Book Quote Collection

Hotel du Lac

Sometimes it was still light when she went to bed, but as the light was of such very great interest to her she would put down her book just to watch it fade, and change colour, and finally become opaque and uninteresting.

Anita BrooknerHotel du Lac

A Private View

As Stendhal said, there was no hypocrisy in mathematics, which isolated it from most other scholarly pursuits. He was an unbeliever: the comforts of religion had been reported to him, but they had sounded more like torments.

Anita BrooknerA Private View

The Midnight Library

'If one advances confidently, Thoreau had written in Walden, in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Matt HaigThe Midnight Library

The Brothers Karamazov

Nearly all clever people now are fearfully afraid of being ridiculous, and that makes them unhappy.

Fyodor DostoevskyThe Brothers KaramazovPart IV, Book X, chapter VI (Alyosha), trans. Constance Garnett

Theo of Golden

Books were her language, her neighborhood, her connection to reality.

Allen LeviTheo of Golden

Bel Canto

Fyodorov didn't speak the language of the house, but when he spoke Russian, he did so with such passion that everyone stopped to listen... The Slavic language was pear brandy on his tongue.

Ann PatchettBel Canto

The Innocents Abroad

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

What We Can Know

The mind is our most erotic feature.

Ian McEwanWhat We Can Know

Чудес, хоть я живу давно... (untitled poem)

По-русски

Чудес, хоть я живу давно, Не видел я покуда. А впрочем, в мире есть одно Действительное чудо: …

The School of Life: An Emotional Education

The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation.

Alain de BottonThe School of Life: An Emotional Education

Three Daughters of Eve

When confronted with others' exuberance and unable to keep up, she always shrank, a hedgehog rolling herself into a ball, self-protection from joy.

Elif ShafakThree Daughters of Eve

Three Daughters of Eve

In truth, food (within reason, don't go overboard) and beverages (non-alcoholic, we need our brains sober) are encouraged, not only because they lift the mood and help the intellect to focus, but also because it is hard to feel hostile towards someone you share bread with.

Elif ShafakThree Daughters of Eve

Three Daughters of Eve

She was taken aback the first time she saw road signs in Welsh and English. Until then it had never occurred to her that you could have more than one official language inside the same country.

Elif ShafakThree Daughters of Eve

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

What deepened Nalan's sense of helplessness was not only Leila's sudden death, or the brutal and horrific way it had happened, but the absolute lack of justice in everything. Life was unfair, and now she realized death was even more so.

Elif Shafak10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

Snow Falling on Cedars

Ishmael, a native, couldn't understand how such transitory and accidental occurrences gained the upper hand in the view of things in the hearts of his fellow Islanders.

David GutersonSnow Falling on Cedars

Terrorist

Review excerpt

The most satisfactory elements in "Terrorist" are those that remind us that no amount of special pleading can set us free of history, no matter how oblivious and unresponsive to it we may be.

Robert StoneTerroristreviewing John Updike's Terrorist, The New York Times Book Review (2006)

Often attributed to Kahlil Gibran

Attributed

Do not live half a life and do not die a half death If you choose silence, then be silent When you speak, do so until you are finished If you accept, then express it bluntly …

Lucy by the Sea

I understood that the childhood isolation of fear and loneliness would never leave me. My childhood had been a lockdown.

Elizabeth StroutLucy by the Sea

A Wild Sheep Chase

Lucy's note

To get irritated is to lose our way in life (like when on a traffic jam).

Haruki MurakamiA Wild Sheep ChaseLucy's note, paraphrased

A Home at the End of the World

I waited for my true feelings to arrive.

Michael CunninghamA Home at the End of the World

A Home at the End of the World

New York could be as ordinary as Cleveland.

Michael CunninghamA Home at the End of the World

A Home at the End of the World

Although we think of the dead inhabiting the past, I now believe they exist in an unending present.

Michael CunninghamA Home at the End of the World

A Home at the End of the World

I took things in, but couldn't give them back again, transformed as language.

Michael CunninghamA Home at the End of the World

A Home at the End of the World

Perhaps we don't fully recover from our first loves.

Michael CunninghamA Home at the End of the World

A Home at the End of the World

Perhaps, in the extravagance of youth, we give away our devotions easily and all but arbitrarily, on the mistaken assumption that we'll always have more to give.

Michael CunninghamA Home at the End of the World

A Home at the End of the World

We owe the dead even less than we owe the living.

Michael CunninghamA Home at the End of the World

A Home at the End of the World

Our only chance of happiness, small enough chance, lay in welcoming change.

Michael CunninghamA Home at the End of the World

Zorba the Greek

I've done heaps and heaps of things in my life, but I still did not do enough.

Nikos KazantzakisZorba the Greek

Стажёры (Stazhery / Space Apprentice)

По-русски

Научить не кланяться авторитетам, а исследовать их и сравнивать их поучения с жизнью. Научить настороженно относиться к опыту бывалых людей, потому что жизнь меняется необычайно быстро. Научить презирать мещанскую мудрость. Научить, что любить и плакать от любви не стыдно.

Arkady and Boris StrugatskyСтажёры (Stazhery / Space Apprentice)

Дорожные жалобы (Dorozhnye zhaloby / Road Complaints)

По-русски

Долго ль мне гулять на свете То в коляске, то верхом, То в кибитке, то в карете, То в телеге, то пешком? …

Eugene Onegin (Nabokov translation and commentary), Introduction

По-русски

В искусстве, как и в науке, наслаждение кроется лишь в ощущении деталей.

Поэт (Poet)

По-русски

Не для житейского волненья, Не для корысти, не для битв, Мы рождены для вдохновенья, Для звуков сладких и молитв.

The Searcher

He appreciates mornings not for their effect on him, but for themselves. Even smack in the middle of a temperamental Chicago neighborhood, dawn sounds rose up with a startling delicacy, and the air had a lemony, clean-scoured tinge that made you breathe deeper and wider. …

Tana FrenchThe Searcher

Больному (Bolnomu / To a Sick Man)

По-русски

Есть горячее солнце, наивные дети, Драгоценная радость мелодий и книг. Если нет — то ведь были, ведь были на свете И Бетховен, и Пушкин, и Гейне, и Григ... …

Sasha ChernyБольному (Bolnomu / To a Sick Man)

We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

The word decision derives from the Latin 'decidere' which means to cut off. Every decision requires a loss, not only of what we might have done otherwise but of the world to which our alternative action would have contributed.

Jonathan Safran FoerWe Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

We live in a culture of historically unprecedented acquisition, which so often asks us and enables us to attain. We are prompted to define ourselves by what we have: possessions, dollars, views and likes. But we are revealed by what we release.

Jonathan Safran FoerWe Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

When I was a boy, my father told me that the best way to get rid of a bee was not to run from it, swat at it, or even stand motionless, but to close my eyes and count to ten.

Jonathan Safran FoerWe Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast

Шестое чувство (Shestoe chuvstvo / The Sixth Sense)

По-русски

Прекрасно в нас влюбленное вино И добрый хлеб, что в печь для нас садится, И женщина, которою дано, Сперва измучившись, нам насладиться. …

Nikolai GumilevШестое чувство (Shestoe chuvstvo / The Sixth Sense)

The Lying Life of Adults

She has the ugliness of banality.

Elena FerranteThe Lying Life of Adults

The Lying Life of Adults

Finishing one gospel, I began the next, and the story seemed even more terrible. Yes, it was a disturbing story. I read and became agitated. We were all serving a Lord who kept us under surveillance to see what we chose, good or evil.

Elena FerranteThe Lying Life of Adults

A Nearly Normal Family

It is so easy to believe that the best is always yet to come. I suspect that's a deeply human fault. Even God instructs us to yearn. Why don't we ever think about how quickly time passes, while it is passing?

M.T. EdvardssonA Nearly Normal Family

A Nearly Normal Family

When you dislike someone on vague grounds, the problem often rests with you.

M.T. EdvardssonA Nearly Normal Family

A Nearly Normal Family

If you only dig a little deeper, it's easy to find some scary shit in every person.

M.T. EdvardssonA Nearly Normal Family

Гость. Туда и обратно (Gost. Tuda i obratno / The Guest: There and Back)

По-русски

На прощание, подружившись со старожилом, я признался ему в любви к Амстердаму и сказал, что решил стать здешним почтальоном, ибо тогда у меня будет нужда и причина каждый день ходить вдоль каналов. — Тебе придется, — нисколько не удивившись, ответил он, — выучить голландский, но это просто.

Norwegian Wood

With my eye closed, I would touch a familiar book and draw its fragrance inside me. This was enough to make me happy. At 18 my favorite book was John Updike's The Centaur.

Haruki MurakamiNorwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood

I am the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox.

Haruki MurakamiNorwegian WoodReiko

Norwegian Wood

I know I have a pretty good sense for music, but she was better than me. I used to think it was such a waste!

Haruki MurakamiNorwegian Wood

Machines Like Me

Reading this material [the instant analysis and opinion in a publication] was a way of not contemplating the event itself.

Ian McEwanMachines Like Me

Machines Like Me

Lucy's note

Adam rated Artemisia Gentileschi and Philip Larkin very highly.

Ian McEwanMachines Like MeLucy's note, paraphrased

Judas

The fact is that all the power in the world cannot transform someone who hates you into someone who likes you. It can turn a foe into a slave, but not into a friend. All the power in the world cannot transform a fanatic into an enlightened man.

Amos OzJudas

Judas

'Surely if you want to challenge Jesus the Christian,' Wald said sadly, 'you have to elevate yourself, not descend into the gutter. It is indeed possible and even fitting to take issue with Jesus, for example on the question of universal love.

Amos OzJudas