Top Ten Tuesday

Well! I haven't done this for a few weeks, but I've become physically unable to read past an amazing quote without writing it down, so this is the perfect list for me. I should add that this affliction is one I've only had for about a year and a half, so there are probably a lot more amazing quotes that I like that I just haven't written down yet, but these are my favourites of the moment. Some of these are kind of long, so sorry about that, but you're surely here cause you like to read, yes? Good! Let's begin.

Top 10 Favourite Quotes From Books


1. "'My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath- a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff- he's always, always in my mind- not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself- but, as my own being." Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte


2. "But still. Still.
     Bless me anyway. I want more life. I can't help myself, I do.
     I've lived through such terrible times, and there are people who've lived through much much worse, but... you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal, I don't know if it's not braver to die. But I recognise the habit. The addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough, so inadequate... But bless me anyway. I want more life." Angels in America, Part II by Tony Kushner


3. "I no longer want to be anything except who I am- who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter, each 'I', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie


4. "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee


5. "The last time of anything has the poignancy of death itself. This that I see now [Francie] thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything, as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day." A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith


6. "When Lot's wife looked over her shoulder, she turned into a pillar of salt. Pillars hold things up and salt keeps things clean, but it's a poor exchange for losing your self. People do go back, but they don't survive because two realities are claiming them at the same time... Going back after a long time will make you mad, because the people you left behind do not like to think of you as changed, will treat you as they always did, accuse you of being indifferent, when you are only different." Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson


7. "Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living." Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer


8. "Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find, and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, Stand.
All the rest is darkness." It by Stephen King


9. "I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest- blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character- perfect concord is the result." Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte


10. "There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so." The Hours by Michael Cunningham


And there you have it folks! As I've said, it's a fairly loose interpretation of my 'favourite' quotes, because there's nary a Jane Austen quote to be seen, and I know there's a beautiful letter in Persuasion that really deserves a mention... but anyway! Another day perhaps!