Lost in a Good Book

Top Ten Tuesday is an original and weekly meme created by The Broke And The Bookish in 2010 but has since moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in 2018.

Topic:  Favourite Book Quotes

“Maybe our favourite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting” – John Green

The thing about book quotes is that you can find great ones that offer life advice, are funny, quirky, profound. So many have been written about books, reading, libraries and librarians. I could include so many but I suppose that’s why Goodreads has the quotes page where you can add as many as you please. Choosing ten was tricky but also easy. I had the quotes I immediately reached for and others I had to think about whether they were my favourite or merely just wonderful. A list of wonderful book quotes is a whole separate thing altogether not to mention quotes by authors but aren’t actually in a book.

In no particular order, these are the ten I decided to add to the list.

• “Every swear word in the Devil’s dictionary curled around my tongue.” – Scott Monk, Boys ‘R’ Us

This line has always stayed with me from this book. It’s very clever and I really want to use it one day.

•  “Take no heed of her…she reads a lot of books.” – Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

All ten of these quotes could be from Fforde’s books. They are witty, true, and fabulous. All the things and I had a very hard time limiting my selection of them. but this is a great quote that I have adopted. It’s flippant and meant to be a dismissal but I like it all the same.

• “Thomas Edison’s last words were “It’s very beautiful over there”. I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.”  – John Green, Looking for Alaska.

This quote has such a profound meaning for me. Alaska is a stunningly beautiful and underappreciated book and Hank Green’s song about it only enhances this. It’s not so much what the quote is saying, but what it represents.

• “Even the dead need caring for.” Gareth P. Jones, The Thornwaite Inheritance

For a strange children’s book, I was struck by this quote. It stood out to me and even inspired some of my writing.

• “We lie to protect our children, and in lying we expose them to the greatest of harms.” – John Connolly, Nocturnes

From a book of creepy short stories about monsters and unknown things, this was an interesting quote to find. It certainly made me think about the truth to it.

• “Loved with obsessive devotion, hated with barely controlled fury” – Heather McCollum, Siren’s Song

I also have to include “The bravest warriors scream inside while fighting for what’s right” as a second from that book because that is an amazing quote as well.

• “I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. If we’re supposed to ignore everything that’s wrong in our lives, then I can’t see how we’ll ever make things right.” – A. S. King, Please Ignore Vera Dietz.

I have so many emotions about vera Dietz. Every paragraph there is another wonderful quote or life lesson to take hold of. It’s a beautiful book.

• “Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Such a wonderfully absurd book. I am also a fan of the poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter which has resulted in me adding “the walrus said” in my head whenever anybody says the phrase “the time has come.”

• “Do I have to talk to insane people?” “You’re a librarian now. I’m afraid it’s mandatory.” – Jasper Fforde, The Woman Who Died A Lot

I always love finding fun quotes about librarians. There’s always the Important ones and the ones about how treasured they are, but I like the ones that make us sound dangerous, or powerful, or just a reality of our day that yes, sometimes people are just a tad bit trying.

• “We should be angry. Because if we aren’t, we aren’t paying enough attention.” – Clementine Ford, Fight Like A Girl

I have a dozen or more Post-Its sticking out from this book with excellent quotes but I love this one because it sums up a lot of things and makes an excellent point about the state of the world.

So there’s my ten. Now I need to go reread some books that I have been reminded of their excellence whilst formulating this list!