Stranger Quotes - Page 29

• The first couple of times, he simply stayed - a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered “Shhh, I’m here, its alright.” After three weeks, he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man’s gentleness, his thereness.

  Markus Zusak

  Couple, Night, Men

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• The observations and encounters of a devotee of solitude and silence are at once less distinct and more penetrating than those of the sociable man; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Images and perceptions which might otherwise be easily dispelled by a glance, a laugh, an exchange of comments, concern him unduly, they sink into mute depths, take on significance, become experiences, adventures, emotions.

  Thomas Mann

  Adventure, Sadness, Men

  Thomas Mann (1999). “Death in Venice, Tonio Kroger, and Other Writings: Thomas Mann”, p.115, A&C Black

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• It is so strange, to encounter an ex. It's as if you're in a foreign film, and what you're saying face-to-face has nothing to do with the subtitles flowing beneath you. We are so careful not to touch, although once upon a time, I slept plastered to him in our bed, like lichen on a rock. We are two strangers who knows every shameful secret, every hidden freckle, every fatal flaw in each other.

  Jodi Picoult

  Rocks, Two, Once Upon A Time

  Jodi Picoult (2011). “Sing You Home: A Novel”, p.240, Simon and Schuster

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• I have to spring a cat out of Rumelt Animal Shelter. Think of it as a prison break." It does the trick. He laughs. "Whose cat?" "My cat. What do you think? That I break out the cats of strangers?" "Let me guess, she was framed. She's innocent.

  Holly Black

  Spring, Cat, Animal

  Holly Black (2010). “White Cat”, p.99, Simon and Schuster

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• Either a mother and daughter know each other very well or they are strangers.

  Shin Kyung-sook

  Daughter, Mother, Wells

  Kyung-Sook Shin (2011). “Please Look After Mom”, p.25, Vintage

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• When I look at the Abnegation lifestyle as an outsider, I think it’s beautiful. When I watch my family move in harmony; when we go to dinner parties and everyone cleans together afterward without having to be asked; when I see Caleb help strangers carry their groceries, I fall in love with this life all over again.

  Veronica Roth

  Beautiful, Falling In Love, Party

  Veronica Roth (2013). “The Divergent Series Complete Collection: Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant”, p.18, Harper Collins

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• The Old Language really was beautiful, Blay thought. Staring at the symbols, for one brief, ridiculous moment he imagined his own name across Qhuinn's shoulders, carved into that smooth skin in the manner of the mating ritual. Never going to happen. They were destined to be best friends...which, compared to strangers, was something huge. Compared to lovers? It was the cold side of a locked door.

  J.R. Ward

  Beautiful, Doors, Names

  J.R. Ward (2010). “Lover Mine: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.28, Penguin

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• Odd how it was so easy for a stranger to assume such familiarity. Especially when those who were supposed to know you best often didn't, not at all.

  Sarah Dessen

  Assuming, Odd, Easy

  Sarah Dessen (2011). “What Happened to Goodbye”, p.55, Penguin

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• Things that are unsightly: birthmarks, infidelity, strangers in one's kitchen. Too much sunlight. Stitches. Missing teeth. Overlong guests.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Missing, Kitchen, Infidelity

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• This business I'm in is different. It's special. The people around me feel like brothers and sisters. We hardly know each other, but we're that close; somehow there's been an immediate bonding between total strangers. We share each other's triumphs, and when one of us gets hurt, we all bleed - it's corny, I know, but it's true. I've never experienced anything like this before. It's great. It turns up the heat in life.

  Johnny Cash

  Hurt, Brother, People

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• We are like oil and vinegar most of the time. But when you shake us up real good, the combination is heavenly.~ Anna Segee, The Stranger in Her Bed

  Janet Chapman

  Real, Oil, Bed

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• In deference to such spectacular carnage it is perhaps perverse to dwell upon one person's death, but we are creatures so constituted that the passing of one friend or one acquaintance has a profounder effect that that of 100,000 strangers. If there is any metaphorical truth in the Jewish proverb that he who saves one life saves the whole world, then there is equal metaphorical truth in the proposition that when one person dies, the whole world dies with them.

  Louis de Bernieres

  World, Passing, Metaphorical

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• Let us not ask for miracles, let us not ask for concern with what is good for the country of him who comes as a stranger to make his fortune and leave afterwards.

  Jose Rizal

  Country, Miracle, Noli Me Tangere

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• If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Notebook, Writing, Cat

  Michael Ondaatje (2011). “The English Patient”, p.51, A&C Black

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• This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it's such a self-centered illness - Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his "Notes from Underground". The depression is painful, you're sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others.

  David Foster Wallace

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  Translation of the Zeit Online interview, www.thehowlingfantods.com. January 26, 2007.

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• For a split second they stared at each other. A fleeting, lasting moment. One person noticing another person out of a whole crowd of strangers.

  Alexandra Potter

  Fleeting, Crowds, Splits

  Alexandra Potter (2004). “Calling Romeo”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• Wanderer: You don't really feel that way about me you know. It's this body... she's pretty isn't she? Ian: She is. Melanie is a very pretty girl. Even beautiful. But pretty as she is, she is a stranger to me. She's not the one I... care about. Wanderer: It's this body. Ian: That's not true at all. It's not the face, but the expressions on it. It's not the voice, but what they say. It's not how you look like in that body, it's what you do with it. You are beautiful.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Beautiful, Girl, Expression

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• A wealth you cannot imagine flows through you. Do not consider what strangers say. Be secluded in your secret heart-house, that bowl of silence.

  Rumi

  Heart, Silence, House

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• Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? why do we feel we need to disconnect in order to connect? If I wrote "Dear Sofia" or "Dear Boomer" or "Dear Lily's Great-Aunt" at the top of this postcard, wouldn't that change the words that followed? Of course it would. But the question is: When I wrote "Dear Lily," was that just a version of "Dear Myself"? I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too

  David Levithan

  Aunt, Order, Needs

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• Youth is the future smiling at a stranger, which is itself.

  Victor Hugo

  Youth

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.

  W. H. Auden

  Writing, Answers, Goes On

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• I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.

  August Wilson

  Funny Family, Like Family, Treats

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• There are times when the kindness of strangers only makes things worse because one realizes how badly one is in need of kindness and that the only source is a stranger.

  Nicole Krauss

  Kindness, Needs, Realizing

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House: A Novel”, p.254, W. W. Norton & Company

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• They were here all at once, but not together. Survival took self-absorption, and it made them strangers with nothing to do and no way to relate. Emergencies gave you a shape and a plot to take part in, while death was no story at all. It left you nothing.

  Ann Brashares

  Self, Survival, Together

  Ann Brashares (2011). “Sisterhood Everlasting (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants): A Novel”, p.58, Random House

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• She smiles at him, too young to know him for a stranger, and too innocent yet to care.

  Paolo Bacigalupi

  Care, Innocent, Young

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