Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Quotes from Recent Reads



Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly book blog meme now hosted by Jana over at The Artsy Reader Girl!

This week's topic is: Favorite Quotes from Recent Reads

 I couldn't quite think of a theme for this week to match quotes to, so instead I decided to look at the books I've read in the past month or so (excluding Sidewinders by Robert V.S. Redick, which I just finished this morning) and pick some favorite quotes from a random selection of books to share with you all. There is no real order or reason to these books, just some random books and great quotes. Let me know if any of these catch your eye!

The Lost City of Z

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

“The rain forest was not a garden of easy abundance, but precisely the opposite. Its quiet, shaded halls of leafy opulence were not a sanctuary, but rather the greatest natural battlefield anywhere on the planet, hosting an unremitting and remorseless fight for survival that occupied every single one of its inhabitants, every minute of every day.”  

“Loneliness is not intolerable when enthusiasm for a quest fills the mind.” 

“Fawcett, quoting a companion, wrote that cannibalism “at least provides a reasonable motive for killing a man, which is more than you can say for civilized warfare.” 

“Many accidents happen to white people because they don't believe their dreams.” 

“Society, in other words, is a captive of geography.” 

"“Anthropologists,” Heckenberger said, “made the mistake of coming into the Amazon in the twentieth century and seeing only small tribes and saying, ‘Well, that’s all there is.’ The problem is that, by then, many Indian populations had already been wiped out by what was essentially a holocaust from European contact. That’s why the first Europeans in the Amazon described such massive settlements that, later, no one could ever find.”    


The Memory Police
The Memory Police by Yoko Ozawa

“Men who start by burning books end by burning other men.” 

“In general,” he continued, “most things you worry about end up being no more than that—just worries.”  

“My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.” 

“...he has never read a single page of any of my books.Once, when I told him I'd love to know what he thinks of them, he demurred."I couldn't possibly say," he said. "If you read a novel to the end, then it's over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I'd much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.” 


The Ones We're Meant to Find
The Ones We're Mean to Find by Joan He

“Celia had loved the sea. Loved the whitecaps that foamed like milk, the waltz of sunlight atop the peaks. Kasey did not. The sea was a trillion strands of hair, infinitely tangled on the surface and infinitely dense beneath. It distorted time: Minutes passed like hours and hours passed like minutes out there. It distorted space, made the horizon seem within reach.And it was the perfect place for hiding secrets.”    

“Alone is an island. It’s an uncrossable sea, being too far from another soul, whereas lonely is being too close, in the same house yet separated by walls because we choose to be, and when I fall asleep, the pain of loneliness follows me as I dream of more walls.”  

 “None of us live without consequence. Our personal preferences are not truly personal. One person’s needs will deny another’s. Our privileges can harm ourselves and others.” 


The Priory of the Orange Tree

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

“I do not sleep because I am not only afraid of the monsters at my door, but also of the monsters my own mind can conjure. The ones that live within.” 

“No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.” 

“We may be small, and we may be young, but we will shake the world for our beliefs.” 

“Reading,' Ead said lightly. 'A dangerous pastime.” 


The Constant Rabbit

The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde

“Somebody once said that the library is actually the dominant life form on the planet. Humans simply exist as the reproductive means to achieve more libraries.” 

“It was one of those British phrases, along with ‘May I help you?’, that can be either exceedingly polite or hugely aggressive.” 

“Humans have a very clear idea about how to behave, and on many occasions actually do. But it’s sometimes disheartening that correct action is drowned out by endless chitter-chatter, designed not to find a way forward but to justify petty jealousies and illogically held prejudices. If you’re going to talk, try to make it relevant, useful and progressive rather than simply distracting and time-wasting nonsense, intended only to justify the untenable and postpone the real dialogue that needs to happen.” 

“Shame is the gateway emotion to increased self-criticism, which leads to realisation, an apology, outrage and eventually meaningful action. We're not holding our breaths that any appreciable members can be arsed to make the journey along that difficult chain of emotional honesty – many good people get past realisation, only to then get horribly stuck at apology – but we live in hope."

The Mountains Sing
The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai 
“Human lives were short and fragile. Time and illnesses consumed us, like flames burning away these pieces of wood. But it didn’t matter how long or short we lived. It mattered more how much light we were able to shed on those we loved and how many people we touched with our compassion.” 

“If our stories survive, we will not die, even when our bodies are no longer here on this Earth.” 

“But by reading their books, I saw the other side of them - their humanity. Somehow I was sure that if people were willing to read each other, and see the light of other cultures, there would be no war on earth.” 

“But it didn’t matter how long or short we lived. It mattered more how much light we were able to shed on those we loved and how many people we touched with our compassion.” 

The Binding

The Binding by Bridget Collins

“May your darkness be quiet and the light come sooner than you need,” 

“Which was worse? To feel nothing, or to grieve for something you no longer remembered? Surely when you forgot, you’d forget to be sad, or what was the point? And yet that numbness would take part of your self away, it would be like having pins-and-needles in your soul … I took a deep breath.” 


Lakewood
Lakewood by Megan Giddings

“Sometimes, dreams are not omens. They’re just your brain stitching things together.” 

“The only dependable way to survive today is to put your faith in the power of other people wanting to give you money. Online fundraising. Corporations that still pretend to care what consumers think. They want to be able to say, See, look how benevolent we are, think about this instead of how we’re polluting the ocean and not paying our workers enough.”

“People feel more loyalty to how they think things should be than to other people, including their family.”  



The Children of Húrin
The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien

“A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.” '

“False hopes are more dangerous than fears.” 

“Let the unseen days be. Today is more than enough.”




Have you read any of these books? Do you have any great quotes to share? Let me know!

3 comments:

  1. These are great quotes! I haven't read any of these books, although some of them are on my TBR list. I'm especially excited to read THE ONES WE'RE MEANT TO FIND.

    Happy TTT!

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  2. The Lost City of Z is one of my favorite nonfiction books. Thanks for sharing!

    Lauren @ Always Me

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