Hey Pandas, Post A Quote From A Book That Was Memorable To You (Closed)

Decades ago when reading one of John D. MacDonald's books I ran across this line, and for some reason it stuck with me. "She had all the organizational skills of a kitten with dysentery."

"It takes 10 Times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart." - Finnick Odair, MockingJay, by Suzanne Collins.

This quote has stuck with me because I lived it. I used to be in a pretty bad spot, suffering from a horrible addiction that started within 3 weeks. It took 2 1/2 years to break it. I haven't indulged in it for the past 2 years.

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater

That's it: Be kind. I cannot think of a better rule to live by.

Happiness can be found even in the darkest time if only one remembers to turn on the light.
-Albus Dumbledore
This quote has stuck with me through the years, and is the reason I'm still here today.

"There is always something left to love"

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

"The extraordinary romanticism of ordinary life" from the book Honor, by Thrity Umrigar and also, "The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it… some stories just don’t have a happy ending" from Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult.

“Loving someone is like moving into a house,” Sonja used to say. “At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren’t actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather for its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it’s cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.”

A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman

Orwell, 1984. “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.…..The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

I literally thought this book must be a recently published parody about Modern day events when I first read it 2 few years ago. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two is four”.

“The point is this: that the stream of memory may lead you to the river of understanding. And understanding, in turn, may be the may be a tributary to the river of forgiveness.”
Wally Lamb. I Know This Much is True

it's a strange one: "perfect paranoia is perfect awareness"...stephen king

it hit me because as former law enforcement/investigator i had to go to kind of unsavory environments. this quote struck me because i would be so overloaded with awareness that it actually was a form of paranoia. and, with that thing call 'gut awareness' it definitely saved me from getting into some bad situations.

Bonding fires originated in the Scottish midlands. A family’s hearth
fire was never allowed to die down completely. Banked embers from
the previous night’s fire were stirred and kindled back into flames.
When children left to marry and raise their own families, they took fire
from their parents’ hearth with them. It was both heirloom and
talisman, nurtured and protected because generations recognized it for
what it was—living memory. When some clans emigrated they kept
the fires burning on the ships as they crossed the Atlantic. Then they
hauled them up into the southern Appalachians from Charleston or
down the Shenandoah from Philadelphia. There had been one bonding
fire started in the 1500s that was kept alive until the 1970s. The flame
was tended by an old man and extinguished only when a dam flooded
the valley where he’d lived eight decades. Two hundred feet of water
covered that hearth now.

from Saints at the River by Ron Rash

"We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it."
- from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, a novel that's more relevant today than when it was published.

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can..."

"Moby D**k" - Chapter I - Herman Melville (1851).

"With great power. . . comes great need to take a nap. Wake me up later." -
Nico di Angelo from Rick Riordan's 'The Last Olympian' (from the series Percy Jackson and the Olympians)


I felt that one in my soul

“There will always be a part of me that is dirty and sloppy, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself.”