John Crowley Quotes

• She had always lived her best life in dreams. She knew no greater pleasure than that moment of passage into the other place, when her limbs grew warm and heavy and the sparkling darkness behind her lids became ordered and doors opened; when conscious thought grew owl's wings and talons and became other than conscious.

  John Crowley

  Dream, Doors, Wings

  46 Copy quote

• There was after all no mystery in the end of love, no mystery but the mystery of love itself, which was large certainly but as real as grass, as natural and unaccountable as bloom and branch and their growth.

  John Crowley

  Real, Growth, Branches

  John Crowley (2015). “Little, Big”, p.487, Hachette UK

  18 Copy quote

• Learning to decipher words had only added to the pleasures of holding spines and turning pages, measuring the journey to the end with a thumb-riffle, poring over frontispieces. Books! Opening with a crackle of old glue, releasing perfume; closing with a solid thump.

  John Crowley

  Book, Journey, Glue

  8 Copy quote

• The things that make us happy make us wise.

  John Crowley

  Inspirational, Happiness, Inspiring

  6 Copy quote

• It was anyway all a long time ago; the world, we know now, is as it is and not different; if there was ever a time when there were passages, doors, the borders open and many crossing, that time is not now. The world is older than it was. Even the weather isn’t as we remember it clearly once being; never lately does there come a summer day such as we remember, never clouds as white as that, never grass as odorous or shade as deep and full of promise as we remember they can be, as once upon a time they were.

  John Crowley

  Summer, Weather, White

  4 Copy quote

• 'Love is a myth,' Grandfather Trout said. 'Like summer.'
  'What?'
  'In winter,' Grandfather Trout said, 'summer is a myth. A report, a rumor. Not to be believed in. Get it? Love is a myth. So is summer.'

  John Crowley

  Summer, Winter, Love Is

  "Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament". Book by John Crowley. Book 5, Chapter 4, 1981.

  5 Copy quote

• Stories last longer: but only by becoming only stories.

  John Crowley

  Stories, Lasts, Becoming

  4 Copy quote

• Violet said nothing, though big pearly tears, like a child's, trembled at her lashes. She suddenly missed John very much. Into him she could pour all the inarticulate perceptions, all the knowings and unknowings she felt, which, though he couldn't understand them really, he would receive reverently, and out of him would come then the advice, the warnings, the clever decisions she could never have made.

  John Crowley

  Clever, Children, Knowing

  7 Copy quote

• The further in you go, the bigger it gets.

  John Crowley

  Bigger, Esoteric Wisdom

  John Crowley (2015). “Little, Big”, p.71, Hachette UK

  7 Copy quote

• Well, do you do that consciously?" Daily Alice asked, only partly of Cloud. "Do what?" Cloud said. "Grow up? No. Well. In a sense. You see it's inevitable, or refuse to. You greet it or don't -- take it in trade, maybe, for all you're going to lose anyway. Or you can refuse, and have what you've got to lose snatched from you, and never take payment -- never see a trade is possible.

  John Crowley

  Growing Up, Clouds, Said

  John Crowley (2015). “Little, Big”, p.193, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.

  John Crowley

  Book, Eye, Promise

  4 Copy quote

• First, she wanted to taste the sweat that shone on his throat and fragile clavicle; then he chose to undo the tails of her shirt, that she had tied up beneath her breasts; then, but then impatient they forgot about taking turns and quarreled silently, eagerly over each other, like pirates dividing treasure long sought, long imagined, long withheld.

  John Crowley

  Sweat, Long, Pirate

  4 Copy quote

• Just as a lamp waved in darkness creates a figure of light in the air, which remains for as long as the lamp repeats its motion exactly, so the universe retains its shape by repetition: the universe is Time's body. And how will we perceive this body? And how operate on it?

  John Crowley

  Body, Universe

  "Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament". Book by John Crowley. Book 4, Chapter 3, 1981.

  4 Copy quote

• Seeing a woman's child is like seeing a woman naked, in the way it changes how her face looks to you, how her face becomes less the whole story.

  John Crowley

  Children, Naked, Looks

  "Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament". Book by John Crowley. Book 2, Chapter 3, 1981.

  4 Copy quote

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