Quiet Quotes - Page 17

• They told us not to wish in the first place, not to aspire, not to try; to be quiet, to play nice, to shoot low and aspire not at all. They are always wrong. Follow your dreams. Make your wishes. Create the future. And above all, believe in yourself.

  J. Michael Straczynski

  Dream, Nice, Believe

  "The Babylon 5 Calendar". 1998.

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• ...even the donkeys were quiet.

  Christopher Paolini

  Donkey

  Christopher Paolini (2014). “The Inheritance Cycle Complete Collection: Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance”, p.825, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• On the outside, Oscar simply looked tired, no taller, no fatter, only the skin under his eyes, pouched from years of quiet desperation, had changed. Inside, he was in a world of hurt. He saw black flashes before his eyes. He saw himself falling through the air. He knew what he was turning into. He was turning into the worst kind of human on the planet: an old bitter dork. Saw himself at the Game Room, picking through the miniatures for the rest of his life. He didn't want this future but he couldn't see how it could be avoided, couldn't figure his way out of it. Fukú.

  Junot Diaz

  Hurt, Fall, Tired

  Junot Diaz (2008). “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, p.268, Faber & Faber

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• Writing is not some quiet, closet act.

  Patti Smith

  Writing, Closets

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• The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.

  Douglas Adams

  People, Sake, Facts

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, p.49, Pan Macmillan

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• Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year's bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide! There are a hundred places where I fear To go,--so with his memory they brim! And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Pain, Memories, Rain

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (2014). “Millay: Poems”, p.56, Everyman's Library

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• She was so quiet. So reflective. And she could erase herself, her spirit, with a swiftness that truly startled, when she knew the people around her could not respect it.

  Alice Walker

  People, Swiftness, Spirit

  Alice Walker (2013). “The Alice Walker Collection: Fiction”, p.397, Hachette UK

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• Here and there one sees the blush of wild rose haws or the warmth of orange fruit on the bittersweet, and back in the woods is the occasional twinkle of partridgeberries. But they are the gem stones, the rare decorations which make the grays, the browns and the greens seem even more quiet, more completely at rest.

  Hal Borland

  Wild Roses, Orange, Here And There

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• BE QUIET!!...What do you want...? I was in the middle of saying something nice.

  Tite Kubo

  Nice, Want, Middle

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• "I was just offered a contract on your life, for enough money to make it worth my while." It was my turn to be quiet. "Did you take it?" "Would I be calling you if I had?" "Maybe," I said. He laughed. "True, but I'm not going to take it." "Why not?" "Friendship." "Try again," I said. "I figure I'll get to kill more people guarding you. If I take the contract, I only get to kill you." "Comforting."

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  People, Comforting, Trying

  "The Killing Dance (Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, Book 6)". Book by Laurell K. Hamilton, June 1, 1997.

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• But perhaps when you were too obedient, and did not do openly what others did, and were quiet in church and hard-working at school, then some unknown rebellion brewed in you, doing harm to you, though how I do not understand.

  Alan Paton

  Hard Work, School, Church

  Alan Paton (2011). “Too Late The Phalarope”, p.94, Simon and Schuster

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• I am in need of music that would flow Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips, Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips, With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow. Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low, Of some song sung to rest the tired dead, A song to fall like water on my head, And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow! There is a magic made by melody: A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep To the subaqueous stillness of the sea, And floats forever in a moon-green pool, Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

  Elizabeth Bishop

  Dream, Song, Fall

  Elizabeth Bishop (2008). “Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters”

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• I like bars just after they open in the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar -- that's wonderful.

  Raymond Chandler

  Air, Bars, Firsts

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.24, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• After a while, though the grief did not go away from us, it grew quiet. What had seemed a storm wailing through the entire darkness seemed to come in at last and lie down.

  Wendell Berry

  Lying, Grief, Darkness

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• The silence between us stretched out, but it wasn't awkward. Sometimes there are people you can be quiet with, and you never feel the need to fill the gap with meaningless chit-chat. I'd only become that close to a couple people in my hometown, and I'd always thought it took years. Lucas and I were already there.

  Claudia Gray

  Couple, Years, People

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• This Lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords, quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it, wherever you may go, even if I let you down, this lullaby plays on.

  Sarah Dessen

  Running, Simple, Play

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “This Lullaby”, p.231, Penguin

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• If you feel . . . that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, 'The world is quiet here,' as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good.

  Daniel Handler

  Book, Reading, Hands

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• There was nothing I hated worse than clumps of whispering girls who got quiet when I passed. I started picking scabs off my body and, when I didn't have any, gnawing the flesh around my fingernails until I was a bleeding wreck. I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being me.

  Sue Monk Kidd

  Girl, Half, Whispering

  Sue Monk Kidd (2003). “The Secret Life of Bees”, p.9, Penguin

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• I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months. There was no anger or reproach. It was Papa who spoke. How did it look?" Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes.

  Markus Zusak

  Stars, Eye, Two

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• The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Cheer, Spring, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.232, Xist Publishing

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• Give 'em all the same grub and all the same pay/And the war would be over and done in a day." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 3

  Erich Maria Remarque

  War, Giving, Would Be

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• Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me." -All Quiet On The Western Front, Chapter 12

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Eye, Hands, Years

  Title of translation of his novel Im Westen nichts Neues (Nothing New in the West, 1929). Cf. the title of a poem by Ethel L. Beers: All Quiet along the Potomac (1861)

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• When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in her breast, One bird begins to close a faded eye; Or overtaken too far from his nest, Hurrying low above the grove, some waif Swoops just in time to his remembered tree. At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe! Now let the night be dark for all of me. Let the night be too dark for me to see Into the future. Let what will be, be.

  Robert Frost

  Eye, Dark, Night

  Robert Frost (1949). “Complete Poems of Robert Frost: 1949”, New York : H. Holt

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• Poor Christopher-John had fallen into the hands of Miss. Daisy Crocker. I greatly sympathized him, but as in everything else, Christopher John tried to see the bright side in having to face such a shrew every morning. "Maybe she done changed," he said hopefully on the first day of school. However, when classes were over he was noticeably quiet. Well?" I asked him. He shrugged dejectedly and admitted, "She still the same.

  Mildred D. Taylor

  Morning, School, Hands

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• Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Summer, Laughter, Flower

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