The Storied Life Of A J Fikry Quotes

I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place. With bookstores like this, I feel confident in saying that there will be a book business for a very long time. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is a breezy, big-hearted treat, especially if you've ever wondered about the inner workings of America's national treasures
neighborhood bookstores. ~ Jami Attenberg

An absolutely delightful book about books, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry will draw you in with its wonderfully written characters and emotional resonance . . . A delight in every sense of the word . . . The little bookstore on Alice Island might just begin to feel like a second home, a cozy place to return to again and again when you need an escape from the world. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. I hate you. I really, really, really hate you. ~ Charles Warnke

People who wrote novels about universities hardly ever got them right. Max had spent his short working life untenured, but still he'd managed to be a charming magnet wherever he taught, and Amy had surfeited on faculty gossip and professorial antics and the general behavior of academics, who were as a whole no more brilliant or Machiavellian than travel agents. They tended toward shabbier clothes and manners, and of course there was the occasional storied eccentric or truly original mind, but most college campuses - especially the older ones - functioned less as brain trusts than as wildlife preserves, housing and protecting people who wouldn't last a week in GenPop. ~ Jincy Willett

You're born, you take shit

get out in the world, you take more shit

climb a little higher, take less shit.

till one day you're in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like.

Welcome to the layer cake, son. ~ J.J. Connolly

I did so want to hear a singer. I miss the sound of a woman's voice, the way they look and smell. ~ J.A. Willoughby

I can go out raw with nothing, and my fans would still be happy, but I feel that I owe it to them to give them almost like a Broadway musical at this point in my life. I have to give them something more, so I do have to think of different ways to do it. ~ Mary J. Blige

As a person, [Barbara Stanwyck] was a great deal like the character she played in Ball of Fire, a stripper called Sugarpuss O'Shea. She had a wonderful, free, open quality in that picture, and that's what she was like as a woman. Reclusive by nature, she was happy to just stay home, but she read everything. She got me reading books as a way of life and, if I asked her, would help me out with my acting. We only had one scene together in Titanic - I played her daughter's boyfriend! - so there was a limit to what I could learn by working with her. She taught me what to do with my hands, how to get over my self-consciousness, and how to lower my voice, which I thought was still too high. And she taught me to be decisive with things like entrances. "When you walk in," she told me, "be sure you're standing up straight. Walk in with confidence." She didn't want me to sidle into a scene as if I were ashamed to be in the movie. Make the entrance! Take the scene! But I wasn't going there for acting tutorials. ~ Robert J. Wagner

There's nothing more powerful than the written word. It can transfer you to a place that exists right now that you'll never get to visit or it can take you to a world that doesn't. It can show you things you'll never experience otherwise in life, and books ... most importantly, they can take you out of your own world, and sometimes you need that. ~ J. Lynn

We employ our personality, what we know, think, and believe, in order to interpret the world, making self-understanding a critical act because it establishes the baseline for our philosophical and intellectual approach towards life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The most important of all rights is the right to life, and I cannot foresee a day when domesticated animals will be granted that right in law. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Much as I admired the elegance of physical theories, which at that time geology wholly lacked, I preferred a life in the woods to one in the laboratory. ~ J. Tuzo Wilson

We humans undergo two major growth spurts: one during infancy and another from eleven to twelve until fifteen or sixteen
pubescence. Between the two is a relatively quiescent growth period in which most of the body takes a rest from growing while the brain continues to mature. This period of life is general referred to as childhood or, sometimes, latency. ~ Louise J. Kaplan

While finding true love was one of the most splendid things that could happen to you in life, finding a friend was equally splendid. ~ Felix J. Palma

Oh, it's nothing to be ashamed of. Slaying a villain in the service of your king is the stuff of legends and what heroes are made of." [Fanen told Myron]
"It didn't feel very heroic. It made me sick. I don't even know why I ... no, that's a lie. I really have to stop doing that." [Myron said]
"Doing what?"
"Lying. ( ... ) It's evidence of self loathing. You see, when you are so ashamed of your actions, thoughts, or intentions, you lie to hide it rather than accept yourself for who you really are. The idea of how others see you becomes more important than the reality of you.
"It's like when a man would rather die than be thought of a coward. His life is not as important to him as his reputation. In the end, who is the braver? The man who dies rather than be thought of as a coward or the man who lives willing to face who he really is?" [Myron finished]
"I'm sorry, you lost me there" Fanen said with a quizzical look. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

The transience of humanity frames the tragedy of all people. There are no happy conclusions to life, we all die, and until we die, we will experience both happiness and pain. Acceptance of the tragedy of humankind without remorse is a shattering experience; it enables us to relinquish mawkish misconceptions, destructive obsessions, and crippling attachments. Only by accepting the tragedy of life as an integral part of the incandescent beauty of life, will I understand what it means to rejoice in the indelible bloom of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

When faced with certain death, running is sensible, but I think a man can make an unhealthy habit of it. Running can take on an importance of its own and become an excuse to avoid living a normal life. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

The paramount terror that plagues humankind is to live a meaningless life of an exile, an incomplete person whom fails to experience the rapture of living in an astonishing manner. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The paradox of friendship is that it is both the strongest thing in the world and the most fragile. Wild horses cannot separate friends, but whining words can. A man will lay down his life for his friend but will not sacrifice his eardrums. ~ Sydney J. Harris

To be a Christian for ten year and to be no more like Jesus then than at the time of conversion, is a tragedy. ~ Oswald J. Smith

This leaves us with the urgent question: How can we be or become a caring community, a community of people not trying to cover the pain or to avoid it by sophisticated bypasses, but rather share it as the source of healing and new life? It is important to realize that you cannot get a Ph.D. in caring, that caring cannot be delegated by specialists, and that therefore nobody can be excused from caring. Still, in a society like ours, we have a strong tendency to refer to specialists. When someone does not feel well, we quickly think, 'Where can we find a doctor?' When someone is confused, we easily advise him to go to a counselor. And when someone is dying, we quickly call a priest. Even when someone wants to pray we wonder if there is a minister around. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

At the most basic level, therefore, secure attachments in both childhood and adulthood are established by two individual's sharing a nonverbal focus on the energy flow (emotional states) and a verbal focus on the information-processing aspects (representational processes of memory and narrative) of mental life. The matter of the mind matters for secure attachments. ~ Daniel J. Siegel

My dad is a bank president and my mom was an accountant and they didn't think that seeking the life of a freelance writer was very practical, you see. Of course, I was just as determined to do it. ~ Kevin J. Anderson

Government usually doesn't work. It doesn't work because it is political. People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs. The difference between the political process and an honest life is the difference between parading around waving picket signs while hollering catcalls in front of the White House and getting up in the morning to go make a living. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

What's the advantage of fear or the benefit of regret or the bonus of granting misery a foothold even if death is embracing you? My old abbot used to say, "Life is only precious if you wish it to be." I look at it like the last bite of a wonderful meal. Do you enjoy it, or does the knowledge that there is no more to follow make it so bitter that you would ruin the experience? - Myron on facing death ~ Michael J. Sullivan

Beautiful but defeated and damaged. Damaged for the rest of her life and no amount of emotional mutilation will ever fully give her back her innocence. The girl is a ticking time bomb, a danger to herself and very possibly to others. I wasn't sure before, but now I know that she is more unstable than I ever could have imagined. And because she is so skilled at hiding it, not only from me but also from herself, she is more dangerous than I am. ~ J.A. Redmerski

Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us. ~ J.G. Ballard

How would it feel to live a full life and have no one remember it, to have no one remember the extraordinary things you accomplished, even if it was just waking up every day and finding the courage to get out of bed? ~ T.J. Klune

Embrace it. Live it. Life's too short. Even looking at it from my end, when I've had more chances than many, I wish
actually even more so now
that I could go back and tinker with a few things ... do a little more of this, a little less of that. But the things about which I feel no regret are those that I did with passion. Those things I remember in living colour. The good and the bad. The rest have faded to black and white. They don't matter. Maybe they never did. ~ Ella J. Fraser

Every unpleasant worldly experience in life exposes our sensitive nervous systems to painful phenomena. Despite all the beer commercial advertisement slogans urging us to live with gusto, life is unavoidably painful. Life is a battering ram that inflicts trauma upon human beings. People blunt the traumatic force of enduring a lifetime of pain, fearfulness, and unremitted anguish and boredom with religion, sex, booze, drugs, fantasy, and other indulgent acts and forms acts of escapism. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Find out what faith is and how you can put it into practice.
Learn how to pray, and do it.
Discover what pride is, and get rid of it.
Develop a self-concept that is adequate and accurate.
Clarify your values.
Identify your talents.
Probe the fact, meaning, and use of your sexuality.
Face the fact that you engage in self-deception.
Reflect on truth that you are made in the image of God.
Use your spiritual gift.
Clear your conscience.
Feel deeply.
Enjoy life.
Face death.
Treat your body right.
Conquer the flesh.
Depend on the Holy Spirit.
Be humble. ~ J. Grant Howard

Are we ever getting out of these mountains?" she asked without turning to look at him.
He moved up behind her and put his arms around her.
She leaned back against him. Her hair glistened with melting snow. She felt small in his arms.
"We're going to get out of here," he whispered as he slowly turned her to face him. "Do you trust me?"
She raised her head to meet his eyes and held his gaze for a long moment. "With my life. ~ B. J. Daniels

All of our lives were a story; their magic came in their retelling. Words could give life everlasting rebirth.

I would accept this challenge. I would use my breath to give life. ~ J. Lynn Else

A sophisticated person is a combination of analytical reasoning and the secret laws of nature. Our irrationality, the hot paroxysms of the inner life, melts away our concrete protective boarders, enabling us to encounter the beauty of nature, and its molten force supplies the poetic imaginings that fuses life with delightful fragrance. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A person must claim the meaning behind his or her existence. How we live is our final testament to what we believed in and our journey through the corridor of time determines our decisive character. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

We must adjust our emotive outlook before drowning in bitterness and choking on despair. We must periodically weed out pangs of disenchantment and scour disillusionment from our hearts in order to console and replenish the depleted resolve of our spirit. Finding ourselves crippled by physical injury, weakened by illness, or left stranded in a vulnerable emotional condition brought on by grief, disappointment, and other physiological or psychological crisis, we must each examine our values and update our mythological mental maps in order to generate a source of stirred concentrate steeling a rejuvenated march onward. Perhaps our sources of revitalizing energy will stem from gaining a new perspective on ancient challenges, by establishing new hopes and dreams, or by delving a lofty purpose behind our efforts. Alternatively, perhaps we only develop the resolve to resume our scrupulous assault on the important issues of life by orchestrating a fundamental transformation of the self, a complete restructuring of our values and goals. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Let us only take heed that this office of Christ is not set before us in vain. It will profit us nothing at the last day that Jesus was a Shepherd, if during our lifetime, we never heard His voice and followed Him. If we love life, let us join His flock without delay. ~ J.C. Ryle

The Puritan ethic of marriage was first to look not for a partner whom you do love passionately at this moment but rather for one whom you can love steadily as your best friend for life, then to proceed with God's help to do just that. ~ J.I. Packer

As Miriam released my hand I felt that she and Midwife Bell had returned to a more primitive world, where men never intruded and even their role in conception was unknown. Here the chain of life was mother to daughter, daughter to mother. Fathers and sons belonged in the shadows with the dogs and livestock, like the retriever growling at Midwife Bell's unfamiliar car from the window of my neighbours' living room. ~ J.G. Ballard

One of the greatest gifts we can give someone is our undivided attention
a thought that whispers constantly in the ear of any author who respects their readers. ~ Ella J. Fraser

No, no, it's not all random, if it really was all random, the universe would abandon us completely. and the universe doesn't. it takes care of its most fragile creations in ways we can't see. like with parents who adore you blindly. and a big sister who feels guilty for being human over you. and a little gravelly-voiced kid whose friends have left him over you. and even a pink-haired girl who carries your picture in her wallet. maybe it is a lottery, but the universe makes it all even out in the end. the universe takes care of all its birds. ~ R.J. Palacio

Not everyone is courageous by nature. But whether we are bold or reticent, God calls leaders to be of good courage and not to capitulate to fear. Such a call to courage would be rather pointless if nobody feared anything. Because fear is a real part of life, God gives us the Holy Spirit, who fills us with power. But we must let the power do its work, and not fear. ~ J. Oswald Sanders

We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life. ~ A.J. Muste

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.

Of course, such an overweening purpose did not develop all at once. The mere stories were the thing. They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially since, even apart from the necessities of life, the mind would wing to the other pole and spen ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Unlike the clonal longevity of asexual organisms, sexually reproduced plants and animals usually have briefer, individual life cycles. In short, the enormous diversity afforded by the evolutionary invention of sexual reproduction came with a price - death of the individual. ~ Richard J. Borden

I think of my sponsor. Rachel. "Addiction is a patient disease," she said to me once. "It'll wait for your whole life, if it has to. Never forget that. ~ S.J. Watson

Select people find themselves early on in life, while other people undergo painful stages of vast changes. Some people never exhibit a centralizing persona and they tend to undergo a series of crisis throughout their lives. I observed some friends, family members, and other acquaintances at various stages in their lives and they seem virtually the same person years later. I am a person who cyclically turns himself inside out after crashing and burning, failing, and then reassembling the seeds of defeat into new victories, only to run aground again. I mentally and emotionally resist change and must consciously force a personal metamorphosis. Could I radically change again? Did I possess the internal reserves to weather a period of reconstitution and then make myself over into a new prototype? Can I will myself to becoming the person I aspire to be? Can I take advantage of human consciousness to broker a way out of self-defeat and a misery-ridden life? ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Promise me you'll look after yourself … stay out of trouble …'
'I always do, Mrs Weasley,' said Harry. 'I like a quiet life, you know me. ~ J.K. Rowling

If you are lucky you will have the opportunity in your life to be owned by a good piece of land. ~ Daniel J. Rice

I've lived a life
of darkness already, years where the sun didn't shine on me, and now that I've seen daylight again, I
don't think I could ever turn my back to it. ~ J.M. Darhower

None of us can discover personal bliss by blindly following the footsteps of other people. We must dare to be originals for we have only one life to live. Living a life that placates other people is fool's gold. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster