Annie Quotes

At night on land migrating monarchs slumber on certain trees, hung in festoons with wings folded together, thick on the trees and shaggy as bearskin. [p. 244]

If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" "No", said the priest, "not if you did not know." "Then why, " asked the Eskimo earnestly, "did you tell me?

What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.

Under her high brows, she eyed him straight on and straight across. She had gone to girls' schools, he recalled later. Those girls looked straight at you.

Life isn't filled with perfect harmony. The world is littered with bum notes, off-key moments and tuneless episodes. The trick is to find your own music, to ignore the discord and sing your own tune.

I think science works the way a tightrope walker works: by not looking at its feet. As soon as it looks at its feet, it realizes its operating in midair.

She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die.

Ivy! It's a natural disaster! You have to be there!

You’ve got a chance to start out all over again. A new place, new people, new sights. A clean slate. See, you can be anything you want with a fresh start.

I would say she’s in the place where the river of time runs into, where the holograms go when they disappear into the air, she is neither completely dreaming, nor fully awake,

For if people could see- if women especially could see- what is real and true and how the elegant possession of what is in each of our individual hearts is what matters more than anything.

If you truly love who you are, travel through this life with conviction, spread joy to others, embrace changes as they happen, then you will find balance in your life.

Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

Individuals who frequently read fiction seem to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and see the world from their perspective.

One of my rules is never to look sideways at what other people are doing but instead, do what I feel is right.

All must pay the debt of nature.

Family does not mean people with the same last name or the same DNA. It means people who care about you, who you trust, who you care about--people you can count on.

I set up and staged hundreds of ends-of-the-world and watched, enthralled, as they played themselves out.

And that's like my world." Annie pointed up to the stars again."Inaccecible.

And that's like my world." Annie pointed up to the stars again. "Inaccessible." "Not, " I said to her softly, "to unicorns. Nothing's inaccessible to unicorns. Not even--not even white birds.

The answer must be, I think, that the beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.

There's a story behind every Bookworm"!

We were never meant for a wimpy life.

Promise me you won’t sacrifice your happiness for something so cheap as acceptance. Find your courage.

Quoyle experienced moments in all colors, uttered brilliancies, paid attention to the rich sound of waves counting stones, he laughed and wept, noticed sunsets, heard music in rain, said I do.

And what does helping someone really mean? Helping them to be like everyone else, or helping them to be themselves?

Point your fire like a flower.

The thing American people fear about corporations is that they might achieve too much power. We have an antipathy to power even as we admire it.

This isn’t like a job we have while we go to college. This is what we like — feed ourselves with.

Share a book and you'll make a friend!

I pity him who refuses to leave the minatory of his refutable Judgments and still insisting on producing his light to lit our worlds.

A photograph is the best split-second decision one can make!

I’ve got something so lovely to think about that I’d like to go back and sit down in the garden, and just think and think until dark without being interrupted by anybody.

Doesn’t make any difference how hard the thing is or how much you want to do something else. Do the thing you first started and do it as well as you possibly can.

Aim at a high mark and you'll hit it. No, not the first time, nor the second time. Maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect.

I always believed that If I’m not carrying at least a slight poetically painful crack in my heart I’ve been cheated by nature.

He just wasn’t into flaunting his awesomeness, but sometimes a person’s awesomeness simply flaunts itself, even when you politely ask it not to.

Nothing monumental happened, the earth didn’t shake, and lightning didn’t strike. There was just a simple moment of raw emotion, unbridled and exposed to the daylight.

When the watermelons were as large as a child's head, the women boiled them, but they collapsed into a tasteless green mush that no one could eat, not the children, not the cow.

There is always a moment in our lives when we are destined to fall the way we ever feared of.

Empathy was written from many male and female points of view because each character reacts differently to the emotional fallout from one binding circumstance

It’s a lie, but it’s the lie he needs. I’m going to hell.

I smelled silt on the wind, turkey, laundry, leaves . . . my God what a world. There is no accounting for one second of it (267).

I want to climb up the blank blue dome as a man would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife claw a rent in the top, peep, and, if I must, fall.

If, as Heraclitus suggests, god, like an oracle, neither "declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs, " then clearly I had better be scrying the signs.

There are some people in this world who can emotionally disconnect like a light switch. It’s like a mental defense mechanism.

I have an idea for a new book. It's a novel about a beautiful yet sensitive author whose spirit is crushed by her domineering editor. Do you like it?

The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.

You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades.

Where are the eyes of my childhood, those fearful eyes she had thirty years ago, the eyes that made me?