Quotes about poignant

Tahereh Mafi - Ignite Me

I’m not sure. But there’s something about the darkness, the stillness of this hour, I think, that creates a language of its own. There’s a strange kind of freedom in the dark; a terrifying vulnerability we allow ourselves at exactly the wrong moment, tricked by the darkness into thinking it will keep our secrets. We forget that the blackness is not a blanket; we forget that the sun will soon rise. But in the moment, at least, we feel brave enough to say things we’d never say in the light.

Nicole Krauss - The History of Love

So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon’tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-I’veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme….There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bunch of string

J.A. Willoughby - ENCORE

I did so want to hear a singer. I miss the sound of a woman's voice, the way they look and smell.

Jenny Erpenbeck - Visitation

This here is your inheritance, says the senior partner. Yes, he says, Ludwig, I know, and stows the plan for the bathing house (5.5m long, 3.8m wide, outer wall construction: wood, roof construction: thatch), stows both the plan and the mosquito in his briefcase. On a German shelf, this mosquito, pressed flat between large quantities of paper, will outlast time and times, and one day it might even be petrified, who knows.

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Monsters and the Critics and other essays

For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote.

Jamie O'Neill - Two Boys

Will I begin it? said Doyler laughing. That's all that's in it, he laughing said.Oh sure that grin. Oh sure that wonderful saucerful grin. Jim sat on the grass and he plucked at the blades. He knew for certain sure that Doyler would be turning from him again. He said, You'll be walking away from me soon, won't you now? There was no answer. Jim plucked the grass and stared beyond where the waves broke on the island shore. He said, I wish you wouldn't Doyler. It does break my heart when you walk a

Chief Seattle - The Chief Seattle's Speech

My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain...There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.

Jill Shalvis - Lucky in Love

Mallory dropped her head to the steering wheel. "Look, I'm mad at you, okay? This isn't about me. I know my painful memories are relative. My life is good. I'm lucky. This isn't about how poor little Mallory has had it so hard. I'm not falling apart or anything."He stroked a hand down her back. "Of course you're not. You're just holding the steering wheel up with your head for a minute, that's all.

J.P. Delaney - The Girl Before

But one day, when Toby is old enough, I will take down a shoe box from a shelf where it is kept, and I will tell him again the story of his sister, Isabel Margaret Cavendish, the girl who came before.

Kristina Riggle -

We all have the best laid plans for our children, and they go and ruin it all by growing up any way they want to. What the hell was it all for, then? (Real Life and Liars)

Ciarán West -

Ah, yeah. Yeah, tis awful all right. Well, your Mam wanted me to talk to you about it, but…’He stopped; he didn’t know what else to say.‘Yeah? Ah, I know the score, Dad. She wants me to be careful, is it?’‘Ah, no. Well, yeah; there’s that, of course. No, she wanted… well, if you’d any questions, youknow?’ I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to say yes, or if he just wanted me to say no, and save himhaving to be awkward. He looked lost. I felt like I wanted to save him‘No, I’ve no questions, Dad. It’s

Sabaa Tahir - A Torch Against the Night

It's a trick question, Aquilla. A Mask is not made. She is remade. First she is destroyed. Stripped down to the trembling child that lives at her core. It doesn't matter how strong she thinks she is. Blackcliff diminishes, humiliates, and humbles her." "But if she survives, she is reborn. She rises from the shadow world of failure and despair so that she might become as fearful as that which destroyed her. So that she might know darkness and use it as her scim and shield in her mission to serve

Anthony Powell - The Acceptance World

There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you.

S.M. McEachern - Sunset Rising

I guess you have to born in the Pit to find light where there isn’t any.

Louise Murphy - The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

Make love to me,” she whispered. “If you make love to me then it is two of us. There is just one of him when he takes my blood, but we are two.” “We are two and more than two,” he whispered in her ear, and then he lifted her and carried her to the bed.

Charles Bukowski -

There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out.

Emily St. John Mandel -

She knows there are traps everywhere that can make her cry, she knows the way she dies a little every time someone asks her for change and she doesn't give it to them means that she's too soft for this world or perhaps just for this city, she feels so small here.

James Salter - Light Years

He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that; there can't be two.

Jonathan Tropper - This is Where I Leave You

...you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else.

Dexter Palmer - The Dream of Perpetual Motion

The machines of this place are failing, and the woman and I are here all alone. The perpetual motion engine, as brilliant and beautiful as it is, is running down—nothing lasts forever. But before this little world falls out of the sky there still might be time enough for redemption. There is still time for me to say the words that I should have had the courage to say at the beginning.There is still time, perhaps, for one more miracle.Hello, Miranda.

William Golding - Lord of the Flies

We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.

Madeleine L'Engle -

They've never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove to Washington the traffic was so bad that I could have made better time with a horse.

Dorothy Dunnett - Checkmate

You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.

Rainer Maria Rilke - The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

Seulement la terre qui obéit,sait bien qu'elle tourne en rond,tandis que nous vers l'infininous précipitons.Translation:But the obedient Earth well knowsthat she moves round and round,whereas we hurtle downtoward infinity.

Lawren Leo - Love's Shadow: Nine Crooked Paths

She remembered something she overheard at a dinner party -- Everyone loses their mind at least once in this lifetime. Everyone.

Owen J. Flanagan - The Problem Of The Soul Two Visions Of Mind And How To Reconcile Them

Someday you will die. Because you are embodied through and through, at that point you will cease to exist. You will not meet death, because, as the sage says, "Where death is I am not; where I am death is not, so we never meet." When you die there will no longer be any self that is you. Use your self while you have it.

John Mark Green -

The Ache That Would Not LeaveBehind the hum and routine of daily living, there lay a persistent and wild longing for something she could not easily put into words. It felt like impulsive adventures and watching the sun rise over unfamiliar mountains, or coffee in a street café, set to the background music of a foreign language. It was the smell of the ocean, with dizzying seagulls whirling in a cobalt sky; exotic foods and strange faces, in a city where no one knew her name. She wanted secrets w

Melinda Cross - One Hour of Magic

I hate these affairs", he'd told her once, tearing up an engraved invitation to an exclusive charity ball. "They're the worst kind of discrimination. An invitation doesn't really mean that you're invited; it means that a whole lot of people aren't

Anthony Powell - A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement

Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost any direction. However, in those days, choice between dignity and unsatisfied curiosity was less clear to me as a cruel decision that had to be made.

Cynthia Voigt - Dicey's Song

The people they had been last summer, the person she had been--Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances. For most of the summer, they had been unattached. Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. It didn't matter what they did, as long as they all stayed together. Dicey remembered that feeling, of having things pretty much her own way. And she remem

Fumiko Enchi - Masks

A faint tear wet Meiko's eye, so slight a bit of moisture that it passed unseen by Yasuko. Yet all the anguish of which she never spoke was compressed into that single drop

William Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra

Come, sir, come,I'll wrestle with you in my strength of love.Look, here I have you, thus I let you go,And give you to the gods.