Bookish Questions – What is your favorite quote from a book?
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What is your favorite quote from a book?
Choosing one favorite quote is hard. Books tell us stories, but they also teach us about life. So many have changed mine. I guess this is where I quote Neil Gaiman and say that
Stories you read when you’re the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you’ll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit. – M is for Magic
So here are a few words that have stuck with me over the years.
Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
– Neil Gaiman, Coraline
Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?
– J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
You get what anybody gets – you get a lifetime.
– Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes
Like you, choosing just one is almost impossible. I started collecting good quotes while I was still in middle school; I actually bought a blank book to write them in (long since lost, alas).
One of my favourite sources is the translation of Uncle Vanya commissioned by David Mamet for the film “Vanya on 42nd Street.” It seems to have a quote for every occasion. Dr Astrov remarks at one point: “One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way–will they think of us kindly? Will they remember us with a kind word? I wish to God I could think so.”
When I was in my teens, back in the 70s, young people talked a lot about how we would like to be remembered, what we wanted our “legacy” to be. We all seemed to have thought of one. I asked that question: “What is your legacy?” on a forum not so many years back, and got the repeated response: “I don’t have one.” And it didn’t seem to bother anyone.
Times have changed.
I’ve started collecting a few of my favorite quotes using the quotes section on GoodReads.com. I find it very handy to be able to reference them from anywhere I have an internet connection. Concerning legacies, I feel like most of the people in my age demographic are too concerned with day-to-day life to think about a personal legacy for the future. But I do think most of them would tell you that they hope to be a generation who leaves the world better than when we found it.
What’s your screen name on GR? You can add me as a friend, if you like–just look for orinoco womble!
You can find me here: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/6903985-andrea-turner