Stranger Quotes - Page 27

• Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Life, Men, Mind

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2012). “The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes - books 1 and 2 (illustrated)”, p.66, The Planet

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• These people you used to see every day, friends or acquaintances, after a while they become as distant as any stranger, people you suddenly recall late at night--you remember something they said or something silly that someone once did. For a few moments they completely occupy your mind; then you forget them again.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Silly, Night, People

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• She had imagined Jace leaping from the bed in astonishment and gasping something like "Egad!" This didn't happen-largely, she suspected, because Jace had seen much stranger things in his life, and also because nobody used the word "Egad!" anymore. His eyes widened, though.

  Cassandra Clare

  Eye, Bed, Astonishment

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.290, Simon and Schuster

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• Also, when on a campaign to convince a stranger that you aren't a few fries short of a Happy Meal, throwing around phrases like "tangentially Swedish" is not the best way to go.

  Maureen Johnson

  Meals, Campaigns, Phrases

  John Green, Lauren Myracle, Maureen Johnson (2009). “Let It Snow: Three Holiday Stories”, p.26, Penguin

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• They had stopped now and he gave a glance up at the sky, through the trees, as though to see how much time was left. Amber, watching him, was suddenly struck with panic. Now he was going--out again into that great world with its bustle and noise and excitement--and she must stay here. She had a terrible new feeling of loneliness, as if she stood in some solitary corner at a party where she was the only stranger. Those places he had seen, she would never see; those fine things he had done, she would never do. But worst of all she would never see him again.

  Kathleen Winsor

  Loneliness, Party, Sky

  Kathleen Winsor (2000). “Forever Amber”, p.44, Chicago Review Press

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• It was a train full of strangers, and they were all the same.

  Cherie Priest

  Community, Train

  Cherie Priest (2012). “Dreadnought”, p.372, Pan Macmillan

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• . . . she gave him one of those broad smiles she reserved for strangers, as if she were aware of being able to pass, in their eyes, for an ordinary woman.

  Nicole Krauss

  Eye, Ordinary, Able

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• Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the depravity of strangers, trapdoors, abysses, fires, cars in the rain, from chance.

  Nicole Krauss

  Mother, Pain, Children

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House: A Novel”, p.270, W. W. Norton & Company

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• ...our eyes locked in one of those looks that sometimes happen between strangers, when both wordlessly agree that reality contains sinkholes whose depths neither can ever hope to fathom.

  Nicole Krauss

  Eye, Reality, Depth

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House”, p.136, Penguin UK

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• When friends speak overmuch of times gone by, often it's because they sense their present time is turning them from friends to strangers. Long before the moment came to say goodbye, I think, we said goodbye in other words and ways and silences. Then when the moment came for it at last, we didn't say it as should be said by friends. So now at last, dear Mouse, with many, many years between: goodbye.

  Frederick Buechner

  Goodbye, Thinking, Years

  FaceBook post by Frederick Buechner from Jan 31, 2017

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• But happiness ... happiness grows at our own firesides," she said. "It is not to be picked in strangers' gardens." ~ The House at Riverton

  Kate Morton

  Garden, House, Said

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• A lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so if the romance is new, a thousand if we're married to him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs an entire person. What we each create, since whatever is missing is filled by our imagination, is the person we wish him to be. The less we know him, of course, the more we love him. And that's why we always remember that first rapturous night when he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only when he's dead.

  Andrew Sean Greer

  Heart, Night, Imagination

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• Perhaps love is a minor madness. And as with madness, it's unendurable alone. The one person who can relieve us is of course the sole person we cannot go to: the one we love. So instead we seek out allies, even among strangers and wives, fellow patients who, if they can't touch the edge of our particular sorrow, have felt something that cuts nearly as deep.

  Andrew Sean Greer

  Cutting, Love Is, Perhaps Love

  Andrew Sean Greer (2008). “The Story of a Marriage”, p.102, Faber & Faber

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• How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature!

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sweet, Nature, Morning

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “The Complete Sherlock Holmes”, p.121, Race Point Publishing

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• My life had taken a stranger turn than I could've ever imagined. What was I doing on this path? Where was I headed really? Who was I to take on a battle between powers I didn't understand— armed with a runaway cat, a uniquely bad drummer, a pair of garden shears, and an Ovaltine-drinking teen Galileo? To save a girl who didn't want to be saved?

  Kami Garcia

  Girl, Taken, Drinking

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• Let me simply state that it is wrong to regard any other human being, a priori, as an object, or an 'It.' This is so because each and every human being - you, every friend, every stranger, every foreigner - is precious.

  M. Scott Peck

  States, Let Me, Foreigners

  M. Scott Peck (2009). “A World Waiting to Be Born: Civility Rediscovered”, p.45, Bantam

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• I dream that I have found us both again, With spring so many strangers' lives away, And we, so free, Out walking by the sea, With someone else's paper words to say.... They took us at the gates of green return, Too lost by then to stop, and ask them why- Do children meet again? Does any trace remain, Along the superhighways of July?

  Thomas Pynchon

  Dream, Children, Spring

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• Selden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it together.

  Edith Wharton

  Summer, Dream, Sky

  Edith Wharton (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edith Wharton (Illustrated)”, p.641, Delphi Classics

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• I´m a stranger in a strange land.

  Carson McCullers

  Land, Strange, Stranger In A Strange Land

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.23, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• ...fairness," he said, "does not govern life and death. if it did, no good person would ever die." "Strangers," the Blue Man said, "are just family you have yet to come to know." "sacrifice is a part of life. it is supposed to be. it's not something to regret. it's something to aspire to. little sacrifices. big sacrifices. a mother works so her son can go to school. a daughter moves home to take care of her sick father. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. you're just passing it on to someone else.

  Mitch Albom

  Mother, Daughter, Regret

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• "Sassenach." He had called me that from the first; the Gaelic word for outlander, a stranger. An Englishman. First in jest, then in affection.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Firsts, Affection, Gaelic

  "Dragonfly in Amber". Book by Diana Gabaldon, 1992.

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• Lone women shouldn't stop in the middle of nowhere for giant unkempt strangers with duct tape on their faces.

  Lee Child

  Giants, Tape, Middle Of Nowhere

  Lee Child (2015). “The Essential Jack Reacher, Volume 2, 6-Book Bundle: 61 Hours, Worth Dying For, The Affair, A Wanted Man, Never Go Back, Personal”, p.599, Delacorte Press

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• Humans were so stupid. They had something so precious, and they barely safeguarded it at all. They threw away their lives for money, for packets of powder, for a stranger's charming smile.

  Cassandra Clare

  Stupid, Charming Smile, Powder

  Cassandra Clare (2009). “Sample of the CITYs”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• So you want to know all about me. Who I am. What chance meeting of brush and canvas painted the face you see? What made me despise the girl in the mirror enough to transform her,turn her to into a stranger, only not. So you want to hear the whole story. Why I swerved off the high road, hard left to nowhere, recklessly indifferent to those coughing my dust, picked up speed no limits,no top end, just a high velocity rush to madness.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Girl, Who I Am, Dust

  Ellen Hopkins (2012). “Crank”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• If I could give you one thought, it would be to lift someone up. Lift a stranger up--lift her up. I would ask you, mother and father, brother and sister, lovers, mother and daughter, father and son, lift someone. The very idea of lifting someone up will lift you, as well.

  Maya Angelou

  Daughter, Mother, Brother

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