Anthony Doerr Quotes

Quotes about:

• Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.

  Anthony Doerr

  Inspirational, Eye, Forever

  Anthony Doerr (2014). “All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel”, p.86, Simon and Schuster

  108 Copy quote

• Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death ... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book.

  Anthony Doerr

  Dream, Book, Fall

  52 Copy quote

• You bury your childhood here and there. It waits for you, all your life, to come back and dig it up.

  Anthony Doerr

  Childhood, Waiting, Here And There

  4 Copy quote

• To say a person is a happy person or an unhappy person is ridiculous. We are a thousand different kinds of people every hour.

  Anthony Doerr

  Unhappy Person, People, Different

  Anthony Doerr (2011). “Memory Wall: Stories”, p.42, Simon and Schuster

  25 Copy quote

• We live through books; we have adventures in them, we lead alternative lives through them. We expand our memories through them. And that sometimes art can offer us more intense experiences of the world than life itself can.

  Anthony Doerr

  Art, Memories, Book

  18 Copy quote

• Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.

  Anthony Doerr

  Hands, Forever, Might

  Anthony Doerr (2014). “All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel”, p.376, Simon and Schuster

  27 Copy quote

• A real diamond is never perfect.

  Anthony Doerr

  Real, Perfect, Diamond

  Anthony Doerr (2014). “All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel”, p.234, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

• Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience--buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello--become new all over again.

  Anthony Doerr

  Country, Home, Vegetables

  Anthony Doerr (2008). “Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World”, p.54, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

• My preference is for prose with more silence in it, language that contains more pockets of strangeness.

  Anthony Doerr

  Silence, Pockets, Language

  19 Copy quote

• Don’t you want to be alive before you die?

  Anthony Doerr

  Alive, Want, Dies

  Anthony Doerr (2014). “All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel”, p.327, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

• I used to think...that I had to be careful with how much I lived. As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn't want to spend it all in one place...But now I know that life is the one thing in the world that never runs out. I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours, but the world will never run out of life. And we're all very lucky to be part of something like that.

  Anthony Doerr

  Running, Thinking, Lucky

  15 Copy quote

• So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

  Anthony Doerr

  Life, Children, Light

  Anthony Doerr (2014). “All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel”, p.48, Simon and Schuster

  22 Copy quote

• It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.

  Anthony Doerr

  Language, Inadequate

  Anthony Doerr (2014). “All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel”, p.503, Simon and Schuster

  17 Copy quote

• Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.

  Anthony Doerr

  Night, Storm, World

  17 Copy quote

• Watching teething babies is like watching over a thermonuclear reactor-it is best done in shifts, by well-rested people.

  Anthony Doerr

  Baby, People, Done

  Anthony Doerr (2008). “Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

  18 Copy quote

• The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we're not careful, pretty soon we're gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack.

  Anthony Doerr

  Narrative Structure, Miracle, Chocolate

  Anthony Doerr (2008). “Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World”, p.54, Simon and Schuster

  17 Copy quote

• We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.

  Anthony Doerr

  Mother, Heart, Cells

  Anthony Doerr (2014). “All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel”, p.468, Simon and Schuster

  20 Copy quote

• For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.

  Anthony Doerr

  Dream, Reading, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  11 Copy quote

• I went to Europe three times, I read dozens and dozens of books, I studied thousands of photos. But I always supplemented that research with imagination; research might give you detail, but imagination supplies the direction in which to apply all that detail.

  Anthony Doerr

  Book, Europe, Giving

  Source: therumpus.net

  8 Copy quote

• Things hardly ever work on the first try. We'll make another, a better one.

  Anthony Doerr

  Trying, Firsts

  Anthony Doerr (2014). “All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel”, p.482, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

• Radio - and perhaps airplanes, and then of course, the atom bomb - was the preeminent technology of the first half of the 20th century. It was how the Third Reich controlled its citizens, spread lies, and disseminated fear.

  Anthony Doerr

  Lying, Airplane, Technology

  Source: therumpus.net

  9 Copy quote

• I found my first novel difficult. I don't want to make it sound like it's any more difficult than driving a cab or going to any other job, but there are so many opportunities for self-doubt, that you just kind of need to soldier on.

  Anthony Doerr

  Jobs, Writing, Opportunity

  "Off the Page: Anthony Doerr". Live chat, www.washingtonpost.com. October 14, 2004.

  7 Copy quote

• My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.

  Anthony Doerr

  Sister In Law, Skills, Long

  "Off the Page: Anthony Doerr". Online discuss, www.washingtonpost.com. October 14, 2004.

  18 Copy quote

• In our memories the stories of our lives defy chronology, resist transcription: past ambushes present, and future hurries into history.

  Anthony Doerr

  Memories, Past, Stories

  Anthony Doerr (2010). “About Grace: A Novel”, p.203, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Only Numbers. Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.

  Anthony Doerr

  Math, Science, Thinking

  Anthony Doerr (2014). “All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel”, p.388, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

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