Quotes For All Occasions

In much the same way as film fanatics like to meet people to whom they can quote a line and instantly know (by virtue of whether or not they recognise its origin) whether or not they have met a kindred soul, I like to do the same with books. However, my love of quotes runs deeper than that. Many of the quotes I love are favourites because they capture some kind of universal truth. There are quotes I remember because they make me smile, some uplift me when life gets difficult and some contain good advice for life. Below are a handful of my favourites.

"As a child she'd been told she had ADD, or ADHD, or some other acronym, but her school librarian had simply clicked her tongue and told her she was imaginative and creative and couldn't be expected to wait for everyone else to catch up."

I read this book when we were beginning the process of an autism/ADHD assessment and I thought this was such a lovely way of referring to it. I read it to my son and although he didn't say much at the time, it certainly marked a change in his attitude from 'does it mean there is something wrong with me?' to adopting a philosophy of it simply being a different label to the 'quirky' one we'd always used. He is who he is and a label just makes it simpler for other, less interesting people to try to understand how his brain works!

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars....But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

Seems like a fairly accurate assessment to me!

“There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.”

There are two quotes I love from these books. In the first, Anne's view of herself is unique and charming and I love her way of expressing herself. She is also absolutely spot on - being the same all the time would be boring and we are all different depending on the company. The second quote I love is from a later book in the series, Anne of Ingleside. She and Gilbert have been married a long time and they go for dinner with someone she regards as an old flame of Gilbert's. All her youthful insecurities come flooding back until she is honest with Gilbert. His response makes me fall in love with him all over again.

“You do love me, Gilbert? You haven’t said you loved me in so long."

“My dear, I didn’t think you needed words to know that. I can’t live without you.”

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan."

I think this is the single most romantic thing ever written. I don't know any woman who would be able to resist an overture like this.

“So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”

I think the reason I love this quote so much is because it is exactly what books do and demonstrates why representation is so important in books. Children particularly, need to feel 'seen' and one of the best ways to make this happen is to have characters in children's literature who are like real children. If you feel you are different to your peers, I can only imagine how validating it must be to come across a character who is similar to you and think 'there are others like me.'

I may not have memorised these quotes, but there is no doubt of their impact on my life and as a writer, we all want to write something which resonates with our readers. Someone remembering what we have written gives us a warm glow!

Is there a particular quote you like? Share it in the comments, or on my social media pages.