Explore Book Quotes

“Do as you will, friend; do as you will. There can be no horror like this ever any more;”

“In general, people are not drawn to perfection in others. People are drawn to shared interests, shared problems, and an individual’s life energy. Humans connect with humans. Hiding one’s humanity and trying to project an image of perfection makes a person vague, slippery, lifeless, and uninteresting.”

“Frankly, it never occurred to me that I needed someone who looked like me to show me the way. I was ignorant and arrogant and persistent and the writing left me no choice at all.”

“Kids chase the love that eludes them.”

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science.”

“The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.”

″‘Just because I do not accept the teachings of the devotaries does not mean I’ve discarded a belief in right and wrong. ... Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality -- which answers only to my heart -- is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.‘”

″ ‘Our wishes were all used up...besides, Jane, two ice-cream cones would ruin your appetite. When we get home we’re going to have clam chowder for lunch!’ ”

The story of a boy who is scared of the bad spirit, the Hairyman, who roams his house at night. But, when he is befriended by a green tree frog, ‘girragundji’, he realizes that his ancestors have sent her to protect him and he can face his fears.

“They were an all-star football team that had endured bruising, exhausting, dangerous practice sessions twelve hours a day, seven days a week—for years—without ever getting to play a game.”