Letters Quotes - Page 40

• Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south? Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

  Pablo Neruda

  Stars, Writing, Remember You

  Pablo Neruda (2015). “The Poetry of Pablo Neruda”, p.14, Macmillan

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• Time wastes too fast : every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen ; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more -- every thing presses on -- whilst thou are twisting that lock, -- see! it grows grey ; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make!

  Laurence Sterne

  Kissing, Clouds, Light

  Laurence Sterne (1830). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: In One Volume, with a Life of the Author”, p.257

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• Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from. . . . Every moment rather brought fresh agitation. It was an overpowering happiness.

  Jane Austen

  Agitation, Moments, Persuasion

  Jane Austen (2016). “Persuasion”, p.221, Simon and Schuster

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• What's that?" he snarled, staring at the envelope Harry was still clutching in his hand. "If it's another form for me to sign, you've got another -" "It's not," said Harry cheerfully. "It's a letter from my godfather." "Godfather?" sputtered Uncle Vernon. "You haven't got a godfather!" "Yes, I have," said Harry brightly. "He was my mum and dad's best friend. He's a convicted murderer, but he's broken out of wizard prison and he's on the run. He likes to keep in touch with me, though...keep up with my news...check if I'm happy.

  J. K. Rowling

  Running, Uncles, Dad

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• The act of sending a letter is an act of generosity, even if, in retrospect, it might seem reckless. Why regret one's generosity? Why regret one's impulsiveness, one's misjudgment of others? The inevitable discovery that someone is selling letters you'd written in trust is simply to discover an obvious human truth: there are those who don't cherish us as we'd cherished them, and had wished to be cherished by them.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Regret, Discovery, Generosity

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• The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. The boys have gone hog-wild with liberty, yet the short flat terms used over and over, both in dialogue and narrative, add neither vigor nor clarity; the effect is not of shock but of something far more dangerous — tedium.

  Dorothy Parker

  Beautiful, Thinking, Boys

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• They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat. "Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper. "Make Harry get it." "Get the mail, Harry." "Make Dudley get it." "Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley.

  J. K. Rowling

  Uncles, Paper, Mail

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• YOU have no room to laugh, that's all. I'm not doing any worse with Boovish than you did with English.' Get off of the car,' J.Lo huffed. 'I am an English superstar.' Uh-uh. There's no comparison. 'Gratuity' in written Boovish has seventeen different bubbles that all have to be the right size and in the right place. 'J.Lo' in written English only has three letters, and you still spelled it 'M-smiley face-pound sign.

  Adam Rex

  Laughing, Car, Rooms

  Adam Rex (2013). “The True Meaning of Smekday”, p.178, A&C Black

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• And what would happen if we never read the classics? There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you have to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that the book lovers have more fun.

  Nick Hornby

  Fun, Book, Lovers

  "Stuff I’ve Been Reading". www.believermag.com. October 2005.

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• Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I!

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Book, Dust, Broken

  Edna St Vincent, Edna St. Vincent Millay (2013). “The Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection”, p.166, eBookIt.com

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• And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table?

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Writing, Boys, Men

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• Now I felt the long-forgotten urgency of lovemaking, when it seems one's human selves leave, to be replaced by hungry beasts bolting their food. Gone are the civilized beings who talk of manners and journeys and letters; in their places are two bodies straining to give birth to a burst of inhuman pleasure followed by a great, floating nothingness. An explosion of life followed by death - in this we live, and in this we foreshadow our own sweet deaths.

  Margaret George

  Sweet, Journey, Self

  Margaret George (2011). “The Memoirs of Cleopatra”, p.262, Pan Macmillan

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• I wrote a huge number of letters that spring: one a week to Naoko, several to Reiko, and several more to Midori. I wrote letters in the classroom, I wrote letters at my desk at home with Seagull in my lap, I wrote letters at empty tables during my breaks at the Italian restaurant. It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.

  Haruki Murakami

  Spring, Home, Writing

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• After he made up his mind to spend the rest of the war in the hospital, Yossarian wrote letters to everyone he knew saying that he was in the hospital but never mentioning why. One day he had a better idea. To everyone he knew he wrote that he was going on a very dangerous mission. "They asked for volunteers. It's very dangerous, but someone has to do it. I'll write you the instant I get back." And he had not written anyone since.

  Joseph Heller

  War, Writing, Ideas

  Joseph Heller (2010). “Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

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• but paper and ink have conjuring abilities of their own. arrangements of lines and shapes, of letters and words on a series of pages make a world we can dwell and travel in.

  Lynda Barry

  Ink, World, Paper

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• I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Writing, Expression, Phrases

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• Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Time, Air, Names

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• I knew something as I watched: almost everyone was saying goodbye to me. I was becoming one of the many little-girl-losts. They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never to be reopened or reread. And I could say goodbye to them, wish them well, bless them somehow for their good thoughts. A handshake in the street, a dropped item picked up and retrieved and handed back, or a friendly wave from the distant window, a nod, a smile, a moment when the eyes lock over the antics of a child.

  Alice Sebold

  Girl, Goodbye, Children

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• It is a peculiar thing to believe that you know someone intimately only to find that you really do not. It is like finishing a book only to discover that you have missed several key chapters. THE LETTER Chapter 9 page 104

  Richard Paul Evans

  Believe, Book, Keys

  FaceBook post by Richard Paul Evans from May 29, 2011

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• For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words--their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?

  Markus Zusak

  Running, Book, Reading

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• In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

  Douglas Adams

  Civilization, Two, Omission

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, p.27, Pan Macmillan

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• I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and over again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.

  Amy Hempel

  Lying, Mean, Thinking

  Amy Hempel (2006). “The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel”, p.233, Simon and Schuster

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• Chicken,' Josie said. 'Have you ever been in love?' Peter looked at Josie, and thought of how they had once tied a note with their addresses to a helium balloon and let it go in her backyard, certain it would reach Mars. Instead, they had received a letter from a widow who lived two blocks away. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I think so.

  Jodi Picoult

  Block, Thinking, Two

  Jodi Picoult (2012). “The Jodi Picoult Reader's Companion: A Collection of Excerpts”, p.420, Simon and Schuster

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• Lies About Love We are all liars, because The truth of yesterday becomes a lie tomorrow, Whereas letters are fixed, and we live by the letter of truth. The love I feel for my friend, this year, is different from the love I felt last year. If it were not so, it would be a lie. Yet we reiterate love! love! love! as if it were a coin with fixed value instead of a flower that dies, and opens a different bud.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Liars, Lying, Flower

  David Herbert Lawrence (1994). “The Works of D.H. Lawrence: With an Introduction and Bibliography”, p.552, Wordsworth Editions

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• Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming chambers like beehives.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Skulls, Space

  "Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies". Book by Hilary Mantel, 2015.

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