Tag Archives: book quotes

Thursday Quotables: The Expats

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Expats

The Expats by Chris Pavone
(published 2012 )

I had a total blast reading this spy thriller this week, not least because it touches on all sorts of issues about marriage and motherhood. As the main character settles into the life of a stay-at-home-mom (after a secret career as an agent), there’s quite a bit of adapting to do:

They did this every Wednesday. Or they will do this every Wednesday. Or this was the second Wednesday they were doing this, with the plan that this is what they will do, on Wednesdays.

Maybe there already was a routine, but she just didn’t recognize it yet.

I like this bit too, maybe because it hints at how I sometimes feel:

Kate was taken aback by this excessive garrulousness. People who were too outgoing made her suspicious. She couldn’t help but presume that all the loud noise was created to hide quiet lies. And the more distinct a surface personality appeared, the more Kate was convinced that it was a veneer.

And finally… on the realities of being an agent:

There were so many people to be assassinated for so many reasons.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Alaska Traveler: Dispatches From America’s Last Frontier

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Alaska Traveler

Alaska Traveler: Dispatches From America’s Last Frontier by Dana Stabenow
(published 2012 )

Guess where I am this week? I promise, I am not one of these:

There is a certain subspecies of the human race known to Alaskans as Homo Sapiens hospesdomus exhades, perhaps more familiar to you as the Houseguest from Hell. These people show up as early as March and eat all your food and drink all your beer and run your car out of gas and marvel at the fact that you can have cable and that you can spend American money in Alaska, and they never, ever go away, or they don’t until the temperature drops below freezing, sometime in September and maybe October.

Greetings from beautiful Alaska, where I’m spending a week with my lovely daughter! I thought it was only fitting to use a snippet of Dana Stabenow’s non-fiction travel writing for this week’s Thursday Quotable.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: The Mapmaker’s Children

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Mapmaker's Children

 

The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy
(published May 5, 2015 )

In this historical novel about the daughter of abolitionist John Brown and their family’s legacy, Sarah Brown experiences a terrible loss and its aftermath:

The grief that had hardened to bitterness in her brothers was purified like boiled water in Sarah. Her father’s death wasn’t an end to his mission but the beginning of something greater.

People were capable of more love and benevolence than they realized. The collective public voice did not always represent the individual heart. Yes, there were terrible men doing terrible deeds to one another. Men in this very town who abused others based on the color of their skin. There were prideful men who thought their marrow was made of more golden stuff than others’. Her father had proven to them all: when a beating heart stopped, there was no black or white, only blood-red. The flesh was equal. It was the character of a man that made him better or worse.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Emma by Jane Austen

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

emma

Emma by Jane Austen
(published 1815 )

It’s been many years since I first read Emma — and listening to the audiobook is just cracking me up. Here are just a few random moments that made me giggle:

On single women, according to Emma herself:

“Never mind, Harriet, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else.”

On living dangerously, according to Mr. Woodhouse:

“Open the windows! – but surely, Mr. Churchill, nobody would think of opening the windows at Randalls. Nobody could be so imprudent! I never heard of such a thing. Dancing with open windows! – I am sure, neither your father nor Mrs. Weston (poor Miss Taylor that was) would suffer it.”

On fashion, according to Mrs. Elton:

“I have the greatest dislike to the idea of being over-trimmed — quite a horror of finery. I must put on a few ornaments now, because it is expected of me. A bride, you know, must appear like a bride…”

And a final health caution from Mr. Woodhouse:

“I am very sorry to hear, Miss Fairfax, of your being out this morning in the rain. Young ladies should take care of themselves. Young ladies are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings?”

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: A Cold Day for Murder

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Cold Day 2

A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow
(published 1992 )

This is a long passage, but it says a lot about some of the characters and conflicts in this award-winning mystery set in Alaska. (To find out more, check out my review, here.)

Kate kept talking, compulsively, the words spilling out of her as if he had not spoken. “Every time she says it, ‘Katya’, she says it in that voice of doom. I see fifty generations of Aleuts lined up behind her, glaring at me. Every time she says it, she’s telling me I betrayed her and my family and the village and my culture and my entire race by running away.” She gave a thin smile. “And now, she’s believes I’ve betrayed myself by running back. I’ve been preaching, and I quote, ‘assimilation into the prevailing culture for the survival of my people.’ Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Sounds like I’ve had seven or eight sociology classes. Sounds like I know what I’m talking about.” Kate smiled, and Jack winced away from the sight of it. “And I live in a log cabin five miles from the closest neighbor and twenty-five miles from the nearest village. I’m shipping Xenia off to town, but I can’t bear to go in myself.”

“Kate,” he said.

“Don’t you understand, we’re not all like this,” she said fiercely. “We’re not even mostly like this. We’re not all drunks and adulterers and murderers. We’re just people, like anybody else trying to get along in this goddam world. We’re starting from behind and we’re just trying to catch up.”

 

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

ABOSAA

A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
(published 2005)

Love advice from a military man:

“It would appear that Mr. Higgins has formed some Attachment to two young Ladies, both resident on Fraser’s Ridge. I have pointed out to him the Difficulty of fighting on two Fronts, as it were, and advised him to concentrate his Forces so as to provide the best chance of Success in his Attack upon a single Object — with, perhaps, the Possibility of falling back to regroup, should his initial Essay fail.”

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Top Ten Tuesday: My top 10 memorable book quotes

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Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is Top Ten Inspiring Quotes from Books. I don’t necessarily have quotes that inspire me, but I do have a bunch that make me happy, for a variety of reasons, whenever I think about them. For some, I like the mood they create or what they say about the characters involved, but in other cases, it’s merely a matter of liking the words used and the way a phrase sounds.

1. “Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”  – from A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

2. “It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.” – from Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

3. “They meant no harm.” – from The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

4. “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling

5. “Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.” – from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

6. “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.” – from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

7. “When the day shall come that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’ – ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.” – from The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon (you didn’t really think I’d get through a whole TTT post without an Outlander reference, did you?)

9. “If you wish to make a wish, you may swish for fish with my Ish wish dish.” – from One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss (I just love to say this one)

10. “Go then, there are other worlds than these.” – from The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Oh, what the heck, one more for good luck:

“The way I saw it, one of the single greatest advantages of being in a relationship was that you got to eat off the other person’s plate.” – from Tempest’s Fury by Nicole Peeler.

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What quotes made your list this week?

Share your links, and I’ll come check out your top 10!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider following Bookshelf Fantasies! And don’t forget to check out my regular weekly feature, Thursday Quotables. Happy reading!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

Thursday Quotables: The Hurricane Sisters

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Hurricane Sisters

The Hurricane Sisters by Dorothea Benton Frank
(published 2014 – now out in paperback! )

I’ve read about 100 pages of this contemporary Southern novel, and it’s quite fun so far! I’m enjoying the descriptions of the South Carolina beaches as well as the very quirky family members.

My husband, Clayton, and I were at the police station getting my mother, Maisie, out of jail for brushing up against the wrong side of the law. Her actual charges were still unclear. She claims it is not against any law in the state of South Carolina to take a llama for a walk on the open road. He was, after all, on a leash.

And a little moment of grandmotherly advice:

“Maisie always says I should remember that I can marry more money in five minutes than I can earn in a lifetime.”

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Inside the O’Briens

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Inside the O'Briens

Inside the O’Briens by Lisa Genova
(to be released April 7, 2015)

I absolutely loved this sad, moving, and inspiring story about a family confronting the reality of a diagnosis of Huntington’s disease (HD). You can read my full review here; meanwhile, here are two different passages that stuck with me:

One of the symptoms of HD is depression. Some people with HD begin with the physical symptoms, the movement changes she was just tested for by the neurologist, but some people begin with the psychological symptoms years before any of the chorea sets in. Obsession, paranoia, depression. She can’t stop thinking about HD, she’s convinced that God has cursed her whole family with this disease, and she’s sad about it. Is her less-than-bubbly mood of late the first sign of HD creeping through the cracks, or is it what any normal person under these totally abnormal circumstances would feel? Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? It’s a circular mind fuck.

This second passage truly captures the heart of this book:

As they lurch down the hallway and finally make it to the kitchen, it occurs to Joe that this is the best anyone can hope for in life.

Someone you love to stagger through the hard times with.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

Thursday Quotables: Good Omens

Posted in Thursday Quotables by

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Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week.  Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.

Good Omens 2

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
(published 1990)

I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to finally read Good Omens, but after attending a Neil Gaiman appearance (video here) on the day of Terry Pratchett’s passing, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer.

As the blurb on the cover says: “The Apocalypse has never been funnier.” I’m only about halfway through the book, but I’m loving it. Here are a few reasons why:

Crowley thumped the wheel. Everything had been going so well, he’d had it really under his thumb these few centuries. That’s how it goes, you think you’re on top of the world, and suddenly they spring Armageddon on you. The Great War, the Last Battle. Heaven versus Hell, three rounds, one Fall, no submission. And that’d be that. No more world. That’s what the end of the world meant. No more world. Just endless Heaven or, depending who won, endless Hell. Crowley didn’t know which was worse.

Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. but Crowly remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.

Another:

Two of them lurked in the ruined graveyard. Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing, both of them Olympic-grade lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded “Born to Lurk,” these two would have been on the album cover. They had been lurking in the fog for an hour now, but they had been pacing themselves and could lurk for the rest of the night if necessary, with still enough sullen menace left for a final burst of lurking around dawn.

One more:

Pepper’s given first names were Pippin Galadriel Moonchild. She had been given them in a naming ceremony in a muddy valley field that contained three sheep and a number of leaky polythene teepees. Her mother had chosen the Welsh valley of Pant-y-Gyrdl as the ideal site to Return to Nature. (Six months later, sick of the rain, the mosquitoes, the men, the tent-trampling sheep who ate first the whole commune’s marijuana crop and then its antique minibus, and by now beginning to glimpse why almost the entire drive of human history has been an attempt to get as far away from Nature as possible, Pepper’s mother returned to Pepper’s surprised grandparents in Tadfield, bought a bra, and enrolled in a sociology course with a deep sigh of relief.)

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

  • Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
  • Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
  • After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
  • Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!