Nina George Quotes

Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone...It's just that you're chipped away at from within, and no one sees how many splinters and layers have been taken off you. You become ever thinner and more brittle inside, until eve the slightest emotion bowls you over. One hug, and you think you're going to shatter and be lost.

Oh well, a second drag couldn't do any harm.

The man had been blind since birth, but he said that he could see the world through the fragrant trails and traces that people's feelings and thoughts had left behind. Che could sense whether a room had been loved or lived or argued in.

Most people only ask questions so they can listen to themselves talk. Or hear something they are able to cope with, but please, nothing that might get the better of them. "Do you love me?" is one of those questions. There should be a total ban on it.

And he had found out that if he wanted to fly, he first had to jump.

The bookseller could not imagine what might be more practical than a book,

Yes, the woman." Cunco took a deep breath. "Women like her don't come along that often, you know. Maybe only every two hundred years. She everything a man could dream of. Beautiful, clever, wise, considerate, passionate--absolutely everything.

We will always remain what we were to one another. Manon

Remain silent about the dead, and they'll never leave you in peace." Second,

In the end, I'm only going next door.
To the end of the corridor, into my favorite room.
And from there, out into the garden.
And there I will become light and go wherever I want.

Capitano Perduto, I'm a firm believer that you have to taste a country's soul to understand it and to grasp its people. And by soul I mean what grows there, what its people see and smell and touch every day, what travels through them and shapes them from the inside out.

Homesickness, for example. In his opinion there are various kinds: a desire for shelter, family nostalgia, a fear of separation or a yearning for love.
"The yearning to have something good to love soon: a place, a person, a particular bed.

He wished he could prop his fearful self up in a corner like a broom and walk away.

Hey, Salvo," asked Max when they had almost fallen asleep. "May I write your story?"
"Don't you dare, amico" was Salvatore's reply. "Kindly come up with your own storia, young Massimo. If you take mine, I'll have none left of my own

Dreams are the interface between the worlds, between time and space.

It looked as though [the stars] were breathing to some never-ending slow, deep rhythm. They breathed & watched as the world came & went. ...For them, the earth was one more island world in the immeasurable ocean of outer space, its inhabitants microscopically small

There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies - I mean books - that were written for one person only… A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that's how I sell books.

At lunchtime and in the evening he read aloud to Cuneo while the latter prepared the meals. Cuneo would often request stories by women authors. "Women tell you more about the world. Men only tell you about themselves.

Do you think only people in books do crazy things?

Otherwise he stayed in the background, a small figure in a painting, while life was played out in the foreground. However,

But it's well known that reading makes people impudent, and tomorrow's world is going to need some people who aren't shy to speak their minds, don't you think?

Some fathers cannot love their children. They find them annoying. Or uninteresting. Or unsettling. They're irritated by their children because they've turned out differently than they had expected. They're irritated because the children were the wife's wish to patch up the marriage when there was nothing left to patch up, her means of forcing a loving marriage where there was no love. And such fathers take it out on the children. Whatever they do, their fathers will be nasty and mean to them." "Please stop." "And the children, the delicate, little, yearning children," Perdu continued more softly, because he was terribly moved by Max's inner turmoil, "do everything they can to be loved. Everything. They think that it must somehow be their fault that their father cannot love them. But Max," and here Perdu lifted Jordan's chin, "it has nothing to do with them.

It often turns out very differently to how you feared.

We turn peculiar when we don't have anyone left to love.

Habit is a vain and treacherous goddess. She lets nothing disrupt her rule. She smothers one desire after another: the desire to travel, the desire for a better job or a new love. She stops us from living as we would like, because habit prevents us from asking ourselves whether we continue to enjoy doing what we do.

It's amazing how close you are to your essential self as a kid, he thought, and how far from it you drift the more you strive to be loved.

There are women who only look at another woman's shoes and never at her face.
And others who always look women in the face and only occasionally at their shoes.

Memories are like wolves. You can't lock them away and hope they leave you alone.

I'll send you a friend request."
"You do that, sonny. I'm on the Internet every last Friday in the month, from eleven to three.

Perdu reflected that is was a common misconception that booksellers looked after books. They look after people.

He had to ask these questions and then remain absolutely silent. Listening in silence was essential to making a comprehensive scan of a person's soul.

We are loved if we love, another truth we always seem to forget. Have you noticed that most people prefer to be loved, and will do anything it takes? Diet, rake in the money, wear scarlet underwear. If only they loved with the same energy; hallelujah, the world would be so wonderful and so free of tummy-tuck tights." Jean

Every second can mark a new beginning. Open your eyes and see: the world is out there and it wants you.

Saudade": a yearning for one's childhood, when the days would merge into one another and the passing of time was of no consequence. It is the sense of being loved in a way that will never come again. It is a unique experience of abandon. It is everything that words cannot capture.

The bookseller read Catherine like a novel. She let him leaf through her and look through her story.

I am the daughter of a tall, strong tree. My timber forms a ship, but it is anchorless, flagless. I set sail for the shade and the light; I drink the wind and forget all ports. To hell with freedom, gifted or seized; if in doubt, always endure alone.

Never listen to fear! Fear makes you stupid.

What's the point of knowing the date of your own death? I'd spend the rest of my life out of my mind with fear.

One might have to be a little ruthless to seize back control of one's life, don't you think?

When the stars imploded billions of years ago, iron and silver, gold and carbon came raining down. And the iron from that stardust is in us today-in our mitochondria. Mothers pass on the stars and their iron to their children. Who knows, Jean, you and I might be made of the dust from one and the same star, and maybe we recognized each other by its light. We were searching for each other. We are star seekers.

She was the world breathing.

Instead of whispering instructions to them like you would to a horse - lie down, woman, put your harness on - you should listen to them. Listen to what they want. In fact, they want to be free and to sail across the sky.

...having a child is like casting off your own childhood forever. It's as if it's only then that you really grasp what it means to be a man. You're scared too that all your weaknesses will be laid bare, because fatherhood demands more than you can give.... I always felt I had to earn your love, because I loved you so, so much.

Loving requires so much courage and so little expectation.

What a hideous life he had chosen, how painful was the loneliness he endured because he didn't have the courage to trust someone again. To trust someone entirely because in love there is no other way.

It takes only one word to hurt a woman, a matter of seconds, one stupid, impatient blow of the crop. But winning back her trust takes years. And sometimes there isn't the time.

Shouldn't we carry on living the same way until the last, because that is what vexes death the most - to see us drinking life to the final draft?

Do you know that there's a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? It's called the hurting time, Jean Perdu. It's a bog; it's where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don't underestimate the transition, Jeanno, between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride.

Tango is a truth drug. It lays bare your problems and your complexes, but also the strengths you hide from others so as not to vex them. It shows what a couple can be for each other, how they can listen to each other. People who only want to listen to themselves will hate tango.

He had barred himself from mourning because...because he had never been part of Manon's life. Because there was nobody to mourn with him. Because he was alone, totally alone with the burden of his love.

The reality of love is better than its reputation.

He's short, fat and, objectively speaking, not the most obvious choice of pin-up boy. But he's smart, strong and he can probably do whatever's necessary for a life of love. I think he's the most beautiful man I will ever kiss,' said Samy. 'It's strange that magnificent, good-hearted people like him don't receive more love. Do their looks disguise their character so well that nobody notices how open their soul, their being and their principles are to love and kindness?

Death doesn't matter
It makes no difference to life.
We will always remain what we were to each other.

He had altered his method of matching books to readers. He often asked, "How would you like to feel when you go to sleep?" Most of his customers wanted to feel light and safe.

He asked others to tell him about their favorite things. Cooks loved their knives. Estate agents loved the jangle made by a bunch of keys. Dentists loved the flicker of fear in their patients' eyes; Perdu had guessed as much.

Most often he asked, "How should the book taste? Of ice cream? Spicy, meaty? Or like a chilled rose?" Food and books were closely related. He discovered this in Sanary, and it earned him the nickname "the book epicure.

I need to make it difficult for myself, not for others: those are the rules for the fallen. Not

... love couldn't stop a woman from wishing to string up her husband because he was a serious pain in the neck.

That's the magic of literature. We read a story, and something happens. We don't know what or why, nor which sentence it was responsible, but the world has changed and will never be the same again. Sometimes it takes us several years to realize that a book tore a hole in reality through which we could escape from the pettiness and despondency of our surroundings.

it's a misconception that book sellers look after books, they look after people.

Whenever Monsieur Perdu looked at a book, he did not see it purely in terms of a story, retail price and an essential balm for the soul; he saw freedom on wings of paper.

Loving or not loving should be like coffee or tea; people should be allowed to decide. How else are we to get over all our dead and the women we've lost?" Cunco whispered dejectedly.
"Maybe we shouldn't."
"You think so? Not get over it. but...then? What then? What task do the departed want us to do?"
That was the question that Jean Perdu had been unable to answer for all these years.
Until now. Now he knew.
"To carry them within us - that is our task. We carry them all inside us, all our dead and shattered loves. Only they make us whole. If we begin to forget or cast aside those we've lost, then...then we are no longer present either. "
Jean looked at the Allier River, glittering in the moonlight.
"All the love, all the dead, all the people we've known. They are the rivers that feed our sea of souls. If we refuse to remember them, that sea will dry up too."
He felt an overwhelming inner thirst to seize life with both hands before time sped past even faster. He didn't want to die of thirst, he wanted to be as wide and free as the sea - full and deep. He longed for friends. He wanted to love. He wanted to feel the marks that Manon had left inside him. He still wanted to feel her coursing through him, mingling with him. Manon had changed him forever - why deny it? That was how he had become the man whom Catherine had allowed to approach her.
Jean Perdu suddenly realized that Catherine could never taken Mann's place. She took her own

Nobody would ever wise up if they hadn't at some stage been young and stupid.

Star salt (the stars' reflection in a river) Sun cradle (the sea) Lemon kiss (everyone knew exactly what this meant!) Family anchor (the dinner table)

Time. It rubs the rough edges that hurt us smooth.

We debated, and he offered praise. He always wanted to know how I came up with things. No one else has ever been so intensely interested in what I think. He never wanted me to be simply "pretty" or "a good girl." His desire was for me to think, to develop internal endurance. He encouraged me in sports, challenged me to think. He helped develop my political sensibility and demanded that I respect people, cultures, and religions. I was never to assume that my truth is the only one that matters. In a sense, the way he brought me up laid the groundwork for how I'm able to see the world. Why

Asking questions is an art.

... books are a very recent means of expression in the broad sweep of history, capable of changing the world and toppling tyrants.

You have to dance the things you cannot explain," Perdu said under his breath.
"And you have to write the things you cannot express," the old novelist thundered.

And it began when you first took a risk, failed and realized that you'd survived the failure. With that knowledge, you could risk anything. Marianne

Paper is patient; authors never are.) At

That awful cockroach story! The mother chasing her own son away with a broom. Horrible. I was cleaning obsessively for days. Is that typical of this Monsieur Kafka?" "You've summed it up well, Madame. Some people have to study it for decades to get the meaning.

Jeanno, women can love so much more intelligently then us men! They never love a man for his body, even if they can enjoy that too ---- and how." Joaquin sighed with pleasure. "But women love you for your character, your strength, your intelligence. Or because you can protect a child. Because you're a good person, you're honorable and dignified. They never love you as stupidly as men love women. Not because you've got especially beautiful calves or look so good in a suit that their business partners look on jealously when they introduce you. Such women do exist, but only as a cautionary example to others.

Everything was to be experienced at the highest pitch of passion and life. To expect something greater after life was to forget that life was the greatest thing of all. He had forgotten that, and now he wanted to live with all his strength and with no further dread.

The trouble is that so many people, most of them women, think they have to have a perfect body to be loved. But all it has to do is be capable of loving---and being loved.

Incidentally, you really can scream with your heart; but it's incredibly painful.

Sanary says that you have to travel south by water to find answers to your dreams. He says too that you find yourself again there, but only if you get lost on the way - completely lost. Through love. Through longing. Through fear. Down south they listen to the sea in order to understand that laughing and crying sound the same, and that the soul sometimes needs to cry to be happy.

Yes, when I feel afraid I want to go to sleep - the soul's refuge from panic. But

books, the only remedy for countless, undefined afflictions of the soul.

...Time had seemed infinite when she still had many years and decades ahead of her. A book waiting to be written: as a girl, that was how she had seen her future life. Now she was sixty, and the pages were blank. Infinity had passed like one long continuous day.

As they made their way from the small marina across the campsite and through the town gate to the bakery, an orc came toward them carrying an armful of baguettes. It was accompanied by an elf dressed up as Legolas, its eyes glued to its iPhone.

Fashion has nothing to do with style," said Colette in her husky voice. "It all depends on whether you want to conceal or reveal who you are.

Perdu cleared his throat and announced to the empty car: "Her words were so natural. Manon showed her feelings, always. She loved the tango. She drank from life as if it were champagne and faced it in the same spirit: she knew that life is special.

Death is not free. Its price is life.

In Persia we call the meeting of two opposites bar-khord. Bar-khord happens when two strong elements touch and something new forms at their point of intersection. It is not a clash of opposites, more like an intermingling. This in-between state is in constant flux. It doesn't set opposites against each other; it is the source of a third element, something completely new that draws on the opposites and bears no major similarities to either one or the other.

The world's leaders should be forced to take a reader's license. Only when they have read five thousand - no, make that ten thousand - books will they be anywhere near qualified to understand humans and how they behave.

A surprise visit? That's so romantic...but fairly risky."
"If you don't take any risks, life will bass you by," Cunco shipped in.

As long as you can walk, you will find a walking stick. As long as you are brave, someone will help you.

I'm looking for what I was capable of before... Or to be more precise, I'm trying to see whether I'm still capable of it.

There. Layer by layer, it appeared. Behind the wall of words......

people; 'Manners like a creased polyester shirt

Oh no, she was never elitist. She said that far too many women are the accomplices of cruel, indifferent men. They lie for these men. They lie to their own children. Because their fathers treated them exactly the same way. These women always retain some hope that love is hiding behind the cruelty, so that the anguish doesn't drive them mad. Truth is, though, Max, there's no love there.

Anna worked in television advertising, she told him.

In a studio with guys past their sell-by date, who mistake women for a cross between an espresso machine and a sofa.

I like being alive, even if it's occasionally a real struggle and fairly pointless in the grand scheme of things.

And slowly, infinitely slowly, he began to trust. Not the sea, from from it; no one should make that mistake!

The more important a thing is, the slower it should be done.

Occasionally she would flounder in the fog of the blues; what she had seen in the shadows of the night would make her irritable or ashamed or irksome or gloomy for hours on end. This was her daily struggle through the in-between world. Jean discovered that he could chase away the dream-ghosts by brewing Catherine a cup of hot coffee and guiding her down to the sea to drink it.

Maybe our lives are nothing but stories that are being read by other people.

And yes, being lovesick is like being in mourning. Because you die, because your future dies and you with it...There is a hurting time. It lasts for so long. But it gets better. I know that now.

Any man who loves a woman as she deserves to be loved is a magician.

In the river meadows, alders, brambles and wild vines formed a magical jungle, dappled with shimmering, greenish light and spangled with twirling forest particles. Marshy pools lay sparkling among the elderberries and leaning beeches.

I don't know why we women believe that sacrificing our desires makes us more attractive to men. What on earth are we thinking? That someone who goes without her wishes deserves to be loved more than she who follows her dreams?