The following is a collection of literary quotes I’ve found interesting. If you have any thoughts on these quotes OR if you’d like to add a quote to this page, email me at bookquote@fmopublications.com with the quote, author, source, and any comments your have concerning the quote.
From 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak. The plot of this book is unusual; it revolves around a murdered woman who, though she is most assuredly dead, she is aware of the world for, you guessed it, 10 minutes and 38 seconds.
As far as she was concerned, the apocalypse was not the worst thing that could happen. The possibility of an immediate and wholesale decimation of civilization was not half as frightening as the simple realization that our individual passing had no impact on the order of things, and life would go on just the same with or without us. Now that, she had always thought, was terrifying.
From the Anton Chekov short story, On The Road, comes this paragraph that I found painted a powerful picture of attraction.
Mlle. Ilovaisky got up slowly, took a step towards Liharev, and fixed her eyes upon his face. From the tears that glittered upon his eyelashes, from his quivering, passionate voice, from the flush on his cheeks, it was clear to her that women were not a chance, not a simple subject of conversation. They were the object of his new enthusiasm, or, as he said himself, his new faith! For the first time in her life, she saw a man carried away, fervently believing. With his gesticulations, his flashing eyes he seemed to her mad, frantic, but there was a feeling of such beauty in the fire of his eyes, in his words, in all the movements of his huge body, that without noticing what he was doing she stood facing his as though rooted to the spot, and gazed into his face with delight.
From a collection of poems by Amanda Gorman, Call Us What We Carry, comes this snippet from the poem, Surviving:
Perhaps the years are plotted & planned
Just like seeds in a fresh-plowed field.
When we dream, we act only with instinct.
We might not be fully sure of all that we are.
& yet we have endured all that we were.