Source: Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
1. If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you area dreamer, a wisher, a liar;
A Hope-er, a Pray-er, a Magic Bean buyer,
If you are a pretender, come sit by my fire;
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin,
Come in!
Come in!
- Shel Silverstein
2. Yes, books are like flypaper - memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.
3. Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
4. Beauty and fear make uneasy companions.
5. Taste every word, Meggie, whispered Mo's voice inside her, savor it on your tongue. Do you taste the colors? Do you taste the wind and the night? The fear and the joy? And the love. Taste them, Meggie, and everything will come to life.
6. In books hatred is often described as hot, but at Capricorn's festivities Meggie discovered it was cold - an ice-cold hand that stops the heart and presses it like a clenched fist against the ribs.
7. "Yes, you're right," agreed Mo. "Perhaps things have changed there after all. Perhaps there's another, much larger story behind the printed one, a story that changes just as our own world does. And the letters on the page tell us only as much as we'd see peering through a keyhole. Perhaps the story in the book is just the lid on a pan: it always stays the same, but underneath there's a whole world that goes on - developing and changing like our own world.
Source: The Philobiblon by Richard de Bury
8. In books I meet the dead as if they were alive,
in books I see what is yet to come...
All things decay and pass with time...
all fame would fall victim to oblivion
if God had not given mortal men the book to aid them.
Source: Shogun ~ A Novel Of Japan by James Carvahall
9. I did not choose to be what I am. It is my karma.
10. I, alone, am heir to the realm. I will be Shogun. And I have started a dynasty.
11. The sky
Scorched by the sun,
Weeps
Fecund tears.
But the forest
Wounded by the wind,
Weeps
Dead leaves.
12. Like dew I was born
Like dew I vanish
Osaka Castle and all that I have ever done
Is but a dream
Within a dream.
Source: The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
13. You don't want her die, I thought, stretching out in the backseat. Because if she does, you lose all hope of killing her yourself. And that would be a shame.
14. An absolutely magnificent man, although he was obviously gay.
15. Well, nothing ends the romance more swiftly than amoebic dysentery.
16. Bags and shoes I'd never seen on real people shouted Prada! Armani! Versace! from every surface.
17. So this is what four years of diagramming and deconstructing books, plays, short stories, and poems were for: a chance to comfort an over-pampered fur ball while trying not to demolish someone else's really, really expensive car. Sweet life. Just as I had always dreamed.
18. Chic furniture with clean, simple lines dared people to sit, ready to scream out in agony if anyone - horror! - spilled.
Source: Eragon by Christopher Paolini
19. Prophecies of revenge, spoken in a wretched language only he knew, rolled from his tongue.
20. The cold stars stared back, unwinking, other worldly watchers.
21. Tragically, during the fight a stray arrow pierced his dragon's heart. Without the arts to save her, she died in his arms.
22. He fervently thanked all the gods, known and unknown.
23. Bloodlust and fear emanated from her in great sickening waves. Fire! Enemies! Death! Murderers!......Oaths betrayed, souls killed, eggs shattered! Blood everywhere. Murderers!
24. Determined to make her turn around, he grimly wormed into her mental armor. He pushed at its weak places, undermined the stronger sections, and fought to make her listen, but to no avail.
25. Eragon, I chose you within my egg. You have been given a chance most would die for.
26. The dwarves were garbed in heavy battle gear. Burnished steel hauberks hung to their knees, and thick roundshields, stamped with the crests of their clan, rested on their left arms. Short swords were sheathed at their waists, while in their right hands they carried mattocks or war axes.
27. The star sapphire had shattered. An expanding torus of huge dagger-like pieces plummeted toward the distant floor - the shimmering shards near the walls.
28. A hidden reserve of strength suddenly welled up inside Eragon, dredged from the deepest part of his being. His fingers curled around the hilt of his sword. He plunged through the barrier in his mind and took hold of the magic. All his pain and rage focused on one word:
"Brisingr!"
Source: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
29. I was granted one weak grace. Back in the room where the green chair was still warm from his body, I blew that lonely, flickering candle out.
30. I flooded the cornfield, I flashed fires through it to light it up, I sent storms of hail and flowers, but none of it worked to warn him. I was relegated to heaven: I watched.
31. His cruelty is in his absence.
32. The fine wall of leaden crystal that had protected her heart - somehow numbed her into disbelief - shattered.
33. "I do," Ruth said. "I don't mean la-la angel-wing crap, but I do think there's a heaven."
34. Seismic, impossible, a rending and tearing of time and space.
35. It was the sensation of being simultaneously resurrected and buried within the same breath.
36. She went into a flower shop and asked for daffodils, and when there were none she felt robbed. It was such a small wish - a bright yellow flower.
37. He had tried to solve my murder and he had failed. He had tried to love my mother and he had failed.
38. A handshake in the street, a dropped item picked up and retrieved and handed back, or a friendly wave from a distant window, a nod, a smile, a moment when the eyes lock over the antics of a child.
39. Her temporary absence was beginning to take on the feel of permanence.
40. He tunneled into stories where weak men changed into strong half-animals or used eye beams or magic hammers to power through steel or climb up the sides of skyscrapers. He was the Hulk when angry and Spidey the rest of the time. When he felt his heart hurt, he turned into something stronger than a little boy, and he grew up this way. A heart that flashed from heart to stone, heart to stone.
41. Stones and bones;
snow and frost;
seeds and beans and polliwogs.
Paths and twigs, assorted kisses,
We all know who Daddy misses!
His two little frogs of girls, that's who.
They know where they are, do you, do you?
Source: J. Doraston, quoted by W. Blades
42. There is a sort of busy worm,
That will the fairest book deform.
Their tasteless tooth will tear and taint,
The poet, patriot, sage or saint,
Nor sparing wit nor learning.
Now, if you'd know the reason why,
The best of reasons I'll supply:
'Tis bread to the poor vermin'.
