#adultbooklrquotes

[oldshrewsburyian]

Nothing, I knew, was as powerful as curiosity. I had always considered it more powerful than lust. After all, wasn't that why Adam bit into the apple? Because he was curious? Because he needed to know? For research.

The Cloisters, Katy Hays

[thelibraryiscool]

But what does the journey not afford the reader? When else is he so focused on reading that he can feel with some assurance the existence of his hero intermingled with his own? Is his body not the shuttle which, in keeping with the rhythm of the wheels, tirelessly pierces the warp -- the hero's book of fate? One did not read in the stagecoach and one does not read in the car. Reading is as related to rail travel as stopping at train stations is. As is well known, many railway stations resemble cathedrals. We, however, want to give thanks to the movable, garish little altars that an acolyte of curiosity, absentmindedness and sensation chases past the train screamingly -- when for a few hours, snuggled into the passing countryside, as though into a streaming scarf, we feel the shudders of suspense and the rhythms of the wheels running up our spine.

Walter Benjamin, “Review: Detective Novels, on Tour,” in The Storyteller (trans. Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie and Sebastian Truskolaski)

[adultbooklr]

Quotes We Loved this Week

Hi AdultBooklrs! What's a quote you loved from a book you read this past week? Reblog this, add your own, and tag it #adultbooklr and #adultbooklrquotes! Here's some of ours:

"I was not a pet, not a doll, not an animal. I was a survivor, and I was strong." -A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas. @sophieinbookland

"Oh, it doesn't get me. I'm pretty well cloistered, and I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway." -The Ice Palace, Flappers and Philosophers by F. Scott Fitzgerald. @mockingjaynfinch

"You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why." -Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer. @gutsreads

"The only thing was, she didn't really want to see the future. What she wanted was to see something no one else could see or would see, and maybe that was asking for more magic than was in the world." -The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater. @loudlysilent

"Do you know -- the only life I am sure of is the life of the Imagination. Whatever the absolute Truth -- or Untruth -- of that old life-in-death -- Poetry can make that man live for the length of the faith you or any other choose to give him." -Possession by A. S. Byatt. @monsieurbookshire

"When you spend so long trapped in the darkness, you find that the darkness begins to stare back."  -A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas. @bookdrunkinlove

[oldshrewsburyian]

Hal woke choking, like he'd swallowed his spit wrong in his sleep. He felt the terror of mortality, the total willingness to repent of his sins, then realized he wasn't dying. It was four in the morning.

Henry Henry, Allen Bratton

[oldshrewsburyian]

Between us lay this great, heavy silence, accreting over the years, layer upon layer, hardening like a coral reef, except a coral reef was a living thing, wasn't it?

The House of Doors, Tan Twan Eng

[oldshrewsburyian]

The shrapnel in his body was a metaphor, but I understood that only many, many years later.

Fox, Dubravka Ugresic

[oldshrewsburyian]

Because he had enjoyed almost every advantage since birth, one of the few privileges denied to Benjamin Rask was that of a heroic rise: his was not a story of resilience and perseverance or the tale of an unbreakable will forging a golden destiny for itself out of little more than dross.

Trust, Hernan Diaz

[oldshrewsburyian]

It was her duty, if her fears were grounded in fact, to educate herself, to read and study the things she'd avoided in the past--to accept any reality that faced her, however unpleasant, with courage and resourcefulness; to remedy the situation if possible; if not, to make the best compromise she could with facts.

The Bad Seed, William March

[oldshrewsburyian]

And so we got to be, for each other, what the other missed.

James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

[oldshrewsburyian]

The poets are wrong when they describe the grave as cold.

Rogue Male, Geoffrey Household

[oldshrewsburyian]

My solitude grew round me like a rind.

For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain, Victoria Mackenzie

[oldshrewsburyian]

Innocence is an unusual quality in that it has two opposites. One is experience. The other is guilt.

The Poison Tree, Erin Kelly

[oldshrewsburyian]

Parler tout haut et tout seul, cela fait l’effet d’un dialogue avec le dieu qu’on a en soi.

L’Homme qui rit, Victor Hugo

[oldshrewsburyian]

Love happens, like age or weather. It's not hard to do, only to endure, sometimes.

Emma Donoghue, “Onward,” in Astray

[oldshrewsburyian]

People neither expected nor hoped for anything. In this frozen time one was left alone to his or her fever.

Fox, Dubravka Ugresic

[oldshrewsburyian]

Time could not be bought. The only coin time accepted was life.

James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk