a shelf QUOTES

1 " Wait," I said as Noah slipped a book from a shelf and headed toward the door. " Where are you going?" " To read?" But I don't want you to. " But I need to go home," I said, my eyes meeting his. " My parents are going to kill me." " Taken care of. You're at Sophie's house." I loved Sophie." So I'm...staying here?" " Daniel's covering for you." I loved Daniel." Where's Katie?" I asked, trying to sound casual." Eliza's house." I loved Eliza." And your parents?" I asked." Some charity thing." I loved charity." So why are you going to read when I'm right here? "

2 " He said he'd hurt himself against a wall or had fallen down.
But there was probably some other reason for the wounded, the bandaged shoulder.

With a rather abrupt gesture, reaching for a shelf to bring down some photographs he wanted to look at, the bandage came came undone and a little blood ran.

I did it up again, taking my time over the binding; he wasn't in pain and I liked looking at the blood. It was a thing of my love, that blood.

When he left, I found, in front of his chair, a bloody rag, part of the dressing, a rag to be thrown straight into the garbage; and I put it to my lips and kept it there a long while- the blood of love against my lips. "

― Constantinos P. Cavafy

3 " It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. So many things have been shown so to me on these banks, so much light has illumined me by reflection here where the water comes down, that I can hardly believe that this grace never flags, that the pouring from ever-renewable sources is endless, impartial, and free. "

― Annie Dillard , Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

4 " A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. "

― Henry Miller , The Books in My Life

5 " A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold. "

― Henry Miller , The Books in My Life

6 " Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them. "

― Samuel Butler , The Note Books Of Samuel Butler

7 " It has always been a happy thought to me that the creek runs on all night, new every minute, whether I wish it or know it or care, as a closed book on a shelf continues to whisper to itself its own inexhaustible tale. "

― Annie Dillard , Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

8 " A self without a shelf remains cryptic a home without books naked. "

9 " Books and bookcases cropping up in stuff that I've written means that they have to be reproduced on stage or on film. This isn't as straightforward as it might seem. A designer will either present you with shelves lined with gilt-tooled library sets, the sort of clubland books one can rent by the yard as decor, or he or she will send out for some junk books from the nearest second-hand bookshop and think that those will do. Another short cut is to order in a cargo of remaindered books so that you end up with a shelf so garish and lacking of character it bears about as much of a relationship to literature as a caravan site does to architecture. A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped to the foot. "

― Alan Bennett , Keeping On Keeping On

10 " I didn't tell him that I'd put his awful stories in boxes and stacked them on a shelf at the back of my mind. I could hear a quieter version of them still, from their dark place, through all the other business that occupied my brain, but I wouldn't unlid those boxes until I was ready to hear [his] stories again as they wanted to be heard. "

― Lauren Wolk , Wolf Hollow

11 " I prefer the skyline
of a shelf of books. "

― Jim Harrison , Braided Creek

12 " In fact, growing up, I thought there were two types of families:1) Those who need a dictionary to get through dinner.2) Those who don't.We were no. 1. Most every night, we'd end up consulting the dictionary, which we kept on a shelf just six steps from the table. " If you have a question," my folks would say, " then find the answer. "

13 " Having books standing on a shelf in a room is like having completely different worlds at the ready, waiting to be explored. "

14 " You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it...fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf - your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in the flight from the real reality. That is the basic definition of Homo sapiens. "

― John Fowles , The French Lieutenant's Woman

15 " Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" Another turning point, a fork stuck in the roadTime grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to goSo make the best of this test, and don't ask whyIt's not a question, but a lesson learned in timeIt's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,I hope you had the time of your life.So take the photographs, and still frames in your mindHang it on a shelf in good health and good timeTattoos and memories and dead skin on trialFor what it's worth, it was worth all the whileIt's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,I hope you had the time of your life.It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,I hope you had the time of your life.It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,I hope you had the time of your life. "

16 " 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. "

― , The Girl Before

17 " Lebedev: A time has come of sorrow and sadness for you. Man, my dear friend, is like a samovar. It doesn't always stand on a shelf in the chill but sometimes they put hot coals in it and it goes psh... psh! This comparison is worthless but you won't think up a cleverer one. "

― Anton Chekhov , Ivanov

18 " The thing is, someday the sun is going to die and everything on Earth will freeze. This will happen. Even if we end global warming and clean up our radiation. The complete works of William Shakespeare, Monet’s lilies, all of Hemingway, all of Milton, all of Keats, our music libraries, our library libraries, our galleries, our poetry, our letters, our names etched in desks. I used to think printing things made them permanent, but that seems so silly now. Everything will be destroyed no matter how hard we work to create it. The idea terrifies me. I want tiny permanents. I want gigantic permanents! I want what I think and who I am captured in an anthology of indulgence I can comfortingly tuck into a shelf in some labyrinthine library. "

― Marina Keegan

19 " No one observed and beheld me, I observed and beheld myself; the invisible current went out and it came back to me. I came to love myself out of defiance, out of despair, because there was nothing else. Such a love will do, but it will only do, it is not the best kind; it has the taste of something left out on a shelf too long that has turned rancid, and when eaten makes the stomach turn. It will do, it will do, but only because there is nothing else to take its place; it is not to be recommended. "

― Jamaica Kincaid

20 " American culture is a sheep culture—long on talk about individualism, but even longer on absolute conformity. Most still believe that individuality is based on which model car you like best—commodity identity, a selection of personalities on a shelf full of products approved by the Federal Identity Administration. I’m a Taurus aspiring to be a Lexus. "

― , Full Spectrum Disorder: The Military in the New American Century

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