"The Five People You Meet in Heaven" Quotes

Here are selected quotes from the book The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.

- "'Strangers,' the Blue Man said, 'are just family you have yet to come to know.'" (49)

- "You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's 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." (93)

- "Through it all, despite it all, Eddie privately adored his old man, because sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behavior. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God, or a woman, a boy will devote himself to a father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation." (106)

- "Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand." (126)

- "Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves." (141)

- "Lost love is still love, Eddie. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it." (173)

"Looking for Alaska" Quotes

"High Fidelity" Quotes

Here are selected quotes from the book High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.

- "What came first - the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture or violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives." (24-25)

- "You see those pictures of people in Pompeii and you think, how weird: one quick game of dice after your tea and you're frozen, and that's how people remember you for the next few thousand years. Suppose it was the first game of dice you've ever played? Suppose you were only doing it to keep your friend Augustus company? Suppose you'd just at that moment finished a brilliant poem or something? Wouldn't it be annoying to be commemorated as a dice player?" (25)

- "I would go so far as to say that TMPMITW's smile has become one of my all-time top-five low points, the other four of which temporarily escape me. I know I'm not as pathetic as the most pathetic man in the world (Did he spend last night in an American recording artist's bed? I very much doubt it.); the point is that the difference between us is not immediately obvious to him, and I can see why." (141)

- "It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can't afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You've got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you've got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you're compelled to start all over again. Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship." (169)

- "When Laura's here, though... I wouldn't go so far as to say she actively like my parents, but she certainly thinks that parents generally are a good thing, and that therefore their little quirks and idiocies are there to be loved, not exposed." (296)

- "Barry, you're over thirty years old. You owe it to yourself and to your friends and to your mum and dad not to sing in a group called Sonic Death Monkey." (303)

- "I play 'Got to Get You off My Mind' by Solomon Burke, and everyone has a go, just out of duty, even though only the best dancers would be able to make something of it, and nobody in the room could claim to be among the best dancers, or even among the most average. When Laura hears the opening bars she spins round and grins and makes several thumbs-up signs, and I start to compile in my head a compilation tape for her, something that's full of stuff she's heard of, and full of stuff she'd play. Tonight, for the first time ever, I can sort of see how it's done." (323) - Final Lines

"Valley of Bones" Quotes

Here are quotes from "Valley of Bones" by Michael Gruber.

- "On the other side, we have what Weil said about the greatness of Christianity being not that it provides a supernatural relief from suffering, but a supernatural use for it. Say you have every good thing. Then you thank God for the honor of being able to serve the poor and the wretched. Now say everything is taken from you, you're crushed like a bug. Simone calls it malheur, the last extremity, nothing left od your personhood at all, sociology has failed, medicine, economics, politics, all the usual dodges are futile, but on the other hand you're a tissue paper away from God. Lose everything, get everything and more, unimaginable graces. Blessed are the poor in spirit. You can't lose." (249)

- "A pilot walks into a saloon in Alaska and the bartender says, of Fred we have not seen you in church recently. Where have you been? The pilot says, I don't go to church any longer. I have lost my faith. The bartender says, but why? The pilot says, last month I crushed my plan in the wilderness in the mountains and I was trapped in the wreckage. I prayed to God to get me out but nothing happened. Day after day I am praying, but nothing. I decide there is no God and I am going to die and there is nothing after death. This is how I lost my faith. So the bartender says, but you did escape from there. You are here alive. And the pilot says, oh, that had nothing to do with God. Some damn Eskimo wandered by and pulled me out." (265)

- "Every plane that goes down must be screaming with prayers."
"That's true, but if any of them are praying sincerely, they're praying for God's mercy in their final moments. That's really the only thing we can pray for, you know, thy will be done, and let me align myself with it." (404)

- "You know, God really wants to talk to us. He tried Scriptures, he tries the still small voice, but we're all unbelievers now, so he mainly speaks to us through a conspiracy of accidents." (410)

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" Quotes

Looking for more The Perks of Being A Wallflower Quotes?

Here are selected quotes from "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky.

- "Dear friend,
I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at the party even though you could have. Please don't try to figure out who she is because then you might figure out who I am, and I don't really want you to do that. I will call people by different names or generic names because I don't want you to find me. I didn't enclose a return address for the same reason. I mean nothing bad by this. Honest.
I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist." (2)

- "Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve." (24)

- "Bob nodded his head. Patrick then said something I don't think I'll ever forget.
'He's a wallflower.'
And Bob really nodded his head. And the whole room nodded their head. And I started to feel nervous in the Bob way, but Patrick didn't let me get too nervous. He sat down next to me.
'You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand.'" (37)

- "Personally, I like to think my brother is having a college experience like they do in movies. I don't mean the big fraternity party kind of movie. More like the movie where the guy meets a smart girl who wears a lot of sweaters and drinks cocoa. They talk about books and issues and kiss in the rain. I think something like that would be very good for him, especially if the girls were unconventionally beautiful. They are the best kind of girls, I think. I personally find 'super models' strange. I don't know why this is." (51)

- "I don't know if it's better to have your kids be happy and not go to college. I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure that she has a better life than you do." (59)

- "Sam and Patrick looked at me. And I looked at them. And I think they knew. Not anything specific really. They just knew. And I think that's all you can ever ask from a friend." (66)

- "And I thought that all those little kids were going to grow up someday. And all those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn't." (74)

- "And all the books you've read have been read by other people. And all the songs you've loved have been heard by other people. And the girl that's pretty to you is pretty to other people. And you know that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you were describing 'unity.'
It's like when you are excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to always feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you're happy too." (96)

- "I didn't feel like reading that night, so I went downstairs and watched a half-hour long commercial that advertised an exercise machine. They kept flashing a 1-800 number, so I called it. The woman who picked up the other end of the phone was named Michelle. And I told Michelle that I was a kid and did not need an excercise machine, but I hoped she was having a good night.
That's when Michelle hung up on me. And I didn't mind a bit." (122)

- "I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like. It's much easier not to know things sometimes. And to have french fries with your mom be enough." (144)

- "And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn't matter." (179)

- "So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel ok about them." (211)

"Tomorrow, I start my sophomore year of high school. And believe it or not, I'm not really afraid of going. I'm not sure if I will have the time to write any more letters because I might be too busy trying to 'participate.'
So, if this does end up being my last letter, please believe that things are good with me, and even when they're not, they will be soon enough.
And I will believe the same about you.

Love always,
Charlie" (213)

"Black Cherry Blues" Quotes