Quiet Quotes - Page 23

• The silence was killing me. And that's all there ever was. Silence. It was all I knew. Keep quiet. Pretend nothing had happened, that nothing was wrong. And look how well that was turning out.

  J. Lynn

  Silence, Looks, Killing

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• She decided she'd rather die in some less memorable way- maybe falling down the stairs, or going peacefully in her sleep at the age eighty, after a nice quiet life with Percy.Yes, that sounded good.

  Rick Riordan

  Nice, Fall, Memorable

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• When I look at him, I don't see the cowardly young man who sold me out to Jeanine Matthews, and i don't hear the excuses he gave afterward. When I look at him, I see the boy who held my hand in the hospital when our mother broke her wrist and told me it would be all right. I see the brother who told me to make my own choices, the night before the Choosing Ceremony. I think of all the remarkable things he is--smart and enthusiastic and observant, quiet and earnest and kind.

  Veronica Roth

  Mother, Brother, Smart

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• He was taught by the river. Incessantly, he learned from it. Most of all, he learned from it to listen, to pay close attention with a quiet heart, with a waiting, opened soul, without passion, without a wish, without judgement, without an opinion.

  Hermann Hesse

  Passion, Heart, Rivers

  Hermann Hesse (2017). “Siddhartha”, p.77, Youcanprint

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• People seem to fight about things very unsuitable for fighting. They make a frightful noise in support of very quiet things. They knock each other about in the name of very fragile things.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Anger, Fighting, Names

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• Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a muse' d rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy!

  John Keats

  Art, Time, Pain

  Ode to Nightingale St. 6 (1820)

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• It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquillity; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea: Listen! the mighty being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thundereverlastingly.

  William Wordsworth

  Time, Sea, Heaven

  1802 'It is a beauteous evening calm and free', l.1-8 (published 1807).

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• Minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
  Pass'd over to the end they were created,
  Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
  Ah, what a life were this!

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Years, White Hair

  William Shakespeare (1853). “The Plays of Shakespeare: The Text Regulated by the Old Copies, and by the Recently Discovered Folio of 1632, Containing Early Manuscript Emendations”, p.476

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• I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits.

  Paul Theroux

  Thinking, Dedication, Serious

  Paul Theroux (2008). “Ghost train to the eastern star: on the tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar”

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• You've been quiet lately...but it's not so much the quiet as something inside the quiet.

  Shannon Hale

  Shannon Hale (2010). “Forest Born”, p.13, A&C Black

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• I would do exactly what you are doing: I would talk to everyone I needed to, I would not tell too many people his name. When I was sure," she said, "I would find a quiet way, and I would kill him.

  Alice Sebold

  Names, People, Way

  Alice Sebold (2002). “The Lovely Bones”, p.44, Hachette UK

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• And he wishes, in the cold quiet of his archer's heart, that he himself could feel the intensity of their reconciliations as strongly as he feels that of their battles.

  David Foster Wallace

  Archer, Heart, Wish

  David Foster Wallace (2014). “Girl With Curious Hair”, p.301, Hachette UK

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• So quiet...it's like...all the sounds in the world...have been stopped...only you scent...in the deepest part of my heart...echoing.

  Yuu Watase

  Heart, Sound, World

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• There was our father, the heart we knew held all of us. Held us heavily and desperately, the doors of his heart opening and closing with the rapidity of stops on an instrument, the quiet felt closures, the ghostly fingering, practice and practice and then, incredibly, sound and melody and warmth.

  Alice Sebold

  Father, Heart, Practice

  Alice Sebold (2014). “The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic”, p.99, Pan Macmillan

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• I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet.

  Tim Winton

  Home, Ears, Dusk

  Tim Winton (2009). “Breath”, p.61, Pan Macmillan

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• You took a walk on a Sunday afternoon and came to a nice neighborhood, very refined. You saw a small one of these trees through the iron gate leading to someone's yard and you knew that soon that section of Brooklyn would get to be a tenement district. The tree knew. It came there first. Afterwards, poor foreigners seeped in and the quiet old brownstone houses were hacked up into flats, feather beds were pushed out on the window sills to air and the Tree of Heaven flourished. That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.

  Betty Smith

  Nice, Sunday, Air

  Betty Smith (2009). “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”, p.6, Harper Collins

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• We studied our angels for a few moments more, looking at where we had lain side by side in that sweet, quiet moment. I wished what I’d said was true, that we had truly left our mark on the mountain. But I knew that after the next snowfall, our angels would disappear into the whiteness and be nothing more than a memory.

  Richelle Mead

  Sweet, Memories, Angel

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• Will you be quiet?" he asked, smiling down at her. She nodded. He pretended to think about it. "I don't believe you/" She planted her hands on her hips, which had to be a ludicrous postition, naked as she was from the waist up. All right," he acceded, "but the only words I'll allow from your mouth are, 'Oh, Gareth,' and 'Yes, Gareth.' He lifted his finger. What about 'More, Gareth?'" He almost kept a straith face. "That will be acceptable

  Julia Quinn

  Believe, Thinking, Hands

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• She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt Claire nor Frank nor anyone else had ever had to teach her: that if you wanted something to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

  Richard Yates

  Aunt, Knowing, Parent

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• Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed. The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed. Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind. Now you and I are quits. Why bother then To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts. Behold what quiet settles on the world. Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars. In hours like these, one rises to address The ages, history, and all creation.

  Vladimir Mayakovsky

  Hurt, Stars, Pain

  Vladimir Mayakovsky (1975). “Klop, Stikhi, Poėmy”, p.237, Indiana University Press

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• I was in the air around him. I was in the cold mornings he had now. I was in the quiet time he spent alone. I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. -Susie Salmon

  Alice Sebold

  Girl, Morning, Kissing

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• For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.

  Gabrielle Zevin

  Song, Knowing, Silence

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• You tell yourself that noise is what defines silence. Without noise, silence would not be golden. Noise is the exception. Think of deep outer space, the incredible cold and quiet where your wife and kid wait. Silence, not heaven, would be reward enough.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Kids, Thinking, Space

  "Lullaby". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, 2002.

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• When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.

  Terry Pratchett

  Reflection, Views, Cities

  "Small Gods". Book by ‎Terry Pratchett, 1992.

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• Over the last couple of years, the photos of me when I was a kid... well, they've started to give me a little pang or something - not unhappiness, exactly, but some kind of quiet, deep regret... I keep wanting to apologize to the little guy: "I'm sorry, I've let you down. I was the person who was supposed to look after you, but I blew it: I made wrong decisions at bad times, and I turned you into me.

  Nick Hornby

  Sorry, Couple, Regret

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