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Little, Big QUOTES

Little, Big QUOTES

1 " Stories last longer: but only by becoming only stories. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

2 " If you know how to read, the World of Books is open to you, after all; and if you like to read, you'll read. If you don't, you'll forget whatever anybody makes you read, anyway. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

3 " God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

4 " Learning to decipher words had only added to the pleasures of holding spines and turning pages, measuring the journey to the end with a thumb-riffle, poring over frontispieces. Books! Opening with a crackle of old glue, releasing perfume; closing with a solid thump. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

5 " There was after all no mystery in the end of love, no mystery but the mystery of love itself, which was large certainly but as real as grass, as natural and unaccountable as bloom and branch and their growth. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

6 " Violet said nothing, though big pearly tears, like a child's, trembled at her lashes. She suddenly missed John very much. Into him she could pour all the inarticulate perceptions, all the knowings and unknowings she felt, which, though he couldn't understand them really, he would receive reverently, and out of him would come then the advice, the warnings, the clever decisions she could never have made. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

7 " She had always lived her best life in dreams. She knew no greater pleasure than that moment of passage into the other place, when her limbs grew warm and heavy and the sparkling darkness behind her lids became ordered and doors opened; when conscious thought grew owl's wings and talons and became other than conscious. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

8 " Almost as soon as it was lit it began to sound as though it were running down, but in fact it would continue to run down for a long time. He knew the feeling. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

9 " Houses made of houses within houses made of time. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

10 " The further in you go, the bigger it gets. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

11 " They called him John Storm: John after his grandfather, but Storm after his father and his mother. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

12 " The things that make us happy make us wise. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

13 " Love is a myth.'
'Love is a myth,' Grandfather Trout said. 'Like summer.'
'What?'
'In winter,'Grandfather Trout said, 'summer is a myth. A report, a rumor. Not to be believed in. Get it? Love is a myth. So is summer. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

14 " It was anyway all a long time ago; the world, we know now, is as it is and not different; if there was ever a time when there were passages, doors, the borders open and many crossing, that time is not now. The world is older than it was. Even the weather isn’t as we remember it clearly once being; never lately does there come a summer day such as we remember, never clouds as white as that, never grass as odorous or shade as deep and full of promise as we remember they can be, as once upon a time they were. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

15 " The universe is Time's body. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

16 " Well, do you do that consciously?" Daily Alice asked, only partly of Cloud.
"Do what?" Cloud said. "Grow up? No. Well. In a sense. You see it's inevitable, or refuse to. You greet it or don't -- take it in trade, maybe, for all you're going to lose anyway. Or you can refuse, and have what you've got to lose snatched from you, and never take payment -- never see a trade is possible. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

17 " Their laughter rose to the ceiling and shook hands there. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

18 " But life is wakings-up, all unexpected, all surprising. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

19 " The tears of those who never cry, the calm, the levelheaded ones, are terrible to see. She seemed to be split or torn by the force of the tears, which she squeezed her eyes shut against, which she forced back with her fist against her lips. Smokey, afraid and awed, came immediately to her as he might to rescue his child from a fire, without thought and without knowing quite what he would do. When he tried to take her hand, speak softly to her, she only trembled more violently, the red cross branded on her face grew uglier; so he enveloped her, smothered the flames, Disregarding her resistance, as well as he could he covered her, having a vague idea that he could by tenderness invade her and then rout her grief, whatever it was, by main strength. He wasn't sure he wasn't himself the cause of it, wasn't sure if she would cling to him for comfort or break him in rage, but he had no choice anyway, savior or sacrifice, it didn't matter so long as she could cease suffering. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big

20 " First, she wanted to taste the sweat that shone on his throat and fragile clavicle; then he chose to undo the tails of her shirt, that she had tied up beneath her breasts; then, but then impatient they forgot about taking turns and quarreled silently, eagerly over each other, like pirates dividing treasure long sought, long imagined, long withheld. "

― John Crowley , Little, Big