Ruins Quotes - Page 10

Falling into ruin was a bit like falling in love: Both descents stripped you bare and left you as you were at your core. And both endings are equally painful.

J.R. Ward

Falling In Love, Painful, Descent

J.R. Ward (2011). “J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8”, p.370, Penguin

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She felt him tremble with the force of his need. He spoke just beneath her ear, his voice thick with tormented pleasure. "You have to leave, Sara ... because I want to hold you like this until your skin melts into mine. I want you in my bed, the smell of you on my sheets, your hair spread across my pillow. I want to take your innocence. God! I want to ruin you for anyone else.

Lisa Kleypas

Voice, Smell, Hair

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And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd made of each other.

Dennis Lehane

Lost Love, Made, Love And Lost

Dennis Lehane (2009). “The Given Day: A Novel”, p.44, Harper Collins

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She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they’d loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin?

Margaret Atwood

Cutting, Thinking, Doors

Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.408, Anchor

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Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it, and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.

Hannah Arendt

Children, Responsibility, Our World

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It is only now, these years later, that Rahel with adult hindsight recognized the sweetness of that gesture. A grown man entertaining three raccoons, treating them like real ladies. Instinctively colluding in the conspiracy of their fiction, taking care not to decimate it with adult carelessness. Or affection. It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.

Arundhati Roy

Dream, Real, Men

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Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the one you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take.

Don DeLillo

Heart, Self, Giving

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I could tell by his expression that once he got over his anger at me for keeping this secret from him, there was nothing left to talk about. He wasn't confused. He didn't need questions answered. He didn't ask why or how or with whom or whether I thought maybe it might just be a phase. He didn't ask who knew and who didn't know or whether I thought it might ruin my career. I was his sister and he didn't care whether I was straight or gay; it simply didn't matter to him.

Portia de Rossi

Confused, Gay, Expression

Portia de Rossi (2011). “Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain”, p.216, Simon and Schuster

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... I see the green earth covered with the works of man or with the ruins of men’s work. The pyramids weigh down the earth, the tower of Babel has pierced the sky, the lovely temples and the gray castles have fallen into ruins. But of all those things which hands have built, what hasn’t fallen nor ever will fall? Dear friends, throw away the trowel and mortarboard! Throw your masons’ aprons over your heads and lie down to build dreams! What are temples of stone and clay to the soul? Learn to build eternal mansions of dreams and visions!

Selma Lagerlöf

Dream, Lying, Fall

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Makin' mistakes ain't a crime, you know. What's the use of having a reputation if you can't ruin it every now and then?

Simone Elkeles

Mistake, Use, Reputation

Simone Elkeles (2011). “Perfect Chemistry”, p.96, Simon and Schuster

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I need to talk to you. I had a weird dream." "Let me guess. You got tied up by lady ninjas. With big hooters." "Uh, no." I take a sip of coffee and wince. It was ridiculously strong. My grandfather shoves a strip of bacon in his mouth with a grin. "Guess it would have been kind of weird if we'd had the same dream." I roll my eyes. "Well, you'd better not tell me anything else. Don't ruin the surprise in case I have it tonight.

Holly Black

Dream, Strong, Coffee

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...The next time I opened my eyes, I was in the morgue. This, all by itself, is enough to really ruin your day. I was lying on the examining table, and Butters, complete with his surgical gown and his tray of autopsy instruments, stood over me. 'I'm not dead!' I sputtered. 'I'm not dead!' - Harry Dresden, Death Masks, Jim Butcher

Jim Butcher

Lying, Eye, Gowns

Jim Butcher (2003). “Death Masks: Book five of The Dresden Files”, p.359, Penguin Group

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Ruin, eldest daughter of Zeus, she blinds us all, that fatal madness—she with those delicate feet of hers, never touching the earth, gliding over the heads of men to trap us all. She entangles one man, now another.

Homer

Daughter, Men, Feet

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Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed and threw it at Henry-threw it to miss. The stone, that token of preposterous time, bounced five yards to Henry's right and fell in the water. Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.

William Golding

Strong, Children, School

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The stones here speak to me, and I know their mute language. Also, they seem deeply to feel what I think. So a broken column of the old Roman times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather- beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering among ruins.

Heinrich Heine

Thinking, Weather, Broken

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Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Math, Religion, Democracy

Antoine de Saint Exupery (1942). “Flight to Arras”

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There are a million rules for being a girl. There are a million things you have to do to get through each day. High school has things that can trip you up, ruin you, people say one thing and mean another, and you have to know all the rules, you have to know what you can and can't do.

Elizabeth Scott

Girl, School, Mean

Elizabeth Scott (2010). “The Unwritten Rule”, p.115, Simon and Schuster

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He prefers not to ruin things with any more questions. What it is is what it is.

Markus Zusak

Markus Zusak (2007). “I Am the Messenger”, p.228, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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it's not called the Rusty Ruins because some guy called Rusty found them.

Scott Westerfeld

Guy, Found

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...the first thing you do at the end is reflect on the beginning. Maybe it's some form of reverse closure, or just the basic human impulse toward sentimentality, or masochism, but as you stand there shell-shocked in the charred ruins of your life, your mind will invariably go back to the time when it all started. And even if you didn't fall in love in the eighties, in your mind it will fee like the eighties, all innocent and airbrushed, with bright colors and shoulder pads and Pat Benatar or The Cure on the soundtrack.

Jonathan Tropper

Falling In Love, Color, Mind

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The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sweet, Winter, Thinking

'Adonais' (1821) preface

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It took me a long time to realize that distance can ruin even the best of intentions.

Nicholas Sparks

Distance, Long, Realizing

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I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing. And if that meant she wasn't entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game. But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool.

Patrick Rothfuss

Beautiful, Song, Winning

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It was a well-known fact that the richness of buttery foods led to the moral ruin and confusion of the intellect.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Confusion, Facts, Moral

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Well . . . he lets it ruin his life. He gets so obsessed with going after the one thing that hurt him that he loses sight of everything else. He becomes isolated from everyone and everything. Paranoid. He feels like he can't trust anyone around him ever. In the end, he loses everything, even his life. And for what? Total stupidity, if you ask me.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Hurt, Sight, Stupidity

Sherrilyn Kenyon (2011). “Invincible: The Chronicles of Nick”, p.105, Macmillan

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