Die schönsten Buchzitate

I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart.

Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don't go along with that. The memories I value most, I don't ever see them fading.

Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.

But then again I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn't like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I'm wondering if without our memories, there's nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.

When it was too late for rescue, it was still early enough for revenge.

How is it possible to hate so deeply for deeds not yet done?

A couple may claim to be bonded by love, but we boatmen may see instead resentment, anger, even hatred. Or a great barrenness. Sometimes a fear of loneliness and nothing more.

What use is a god with boundless mercy, sir? You mock me as a pagan, yet the gods of my ancestors pronounce clearly their ways and punish severely when we break their laws. Your Christian god of mercy gives men licence to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing.

The danger isn't the river's speed, friend, but its slowness.

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to.

All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.

You say you're sure? Sure that you're in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple?

The evening's the best part of the day. You've done your day's work. Now you can put your feet up and enjoy it.

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.

The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.

After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?

The giant, once well buried, now stirs. When soon he rises, as surely he will, the friendly bonds between us will prove as knots young girls make with the stems of small flowers.

Indeed - why should I not admit it? - in that moment, my heart was breaking.

Ich habe die Wette gewonnen, aber ich habe das Einzige verloren, was mich jemals glücklich gemacht hat.

I won the bet but I lost the only thing that has ever made me happy.

Eine Frau muss ihr Leben leben oder leben, um zu bereuen, dass sie es nicht gelebt hat.

A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.

There's lots of good fish in the sea... maybe... but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.

Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.

Sex and a cocktail: they both lasted about as long, had the same effect, and amounted to the same thing.

I only want one thing of men, and that is, that they should leave me alone.

It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.

A little morphine in all the air. It would be wonderfully refreshing for everyone.

What the eye doesn't see and the mind doesn't know, doesn't exist.

Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own.

Den Kopf in den Rachen das Löwen zu stecken, ist auch nicht gefährlicher, als ihn von einer Frau streicheln zu lassen.

Me? Oh, intellectually I believe in having a good heart, a chirpy p-nis, a lively intelligence, and the courage to say 'shit!' in front of a lady.

Moral ist der instinktive Widerwille einer Mehrheit.

Geld ist eine Art Instinkt. Geld machen ist eine Art Naturveranlagung im Menschen.

Money is a sort of instinct. It's a sort of property of nature in a man to make money.

Unser Zeitalter ist seinem Wesen nach tragisch, also weigern wir uns, es tragisch zu nehmen. Die Katastrophe ist hereingebrochen, wir stehen vor den Trümmern, wir fangen an, neue kleine Gewohnheiten zu bilden, neue kleine Hoffnungen zu hegen. Es ist ein hartes Stück Arbeit: Kein ebener Weg führt in die Zukunft; wir umgehen die Hindernisse jedoch oder klettern über sie hinweg. Wir müssen leben – einerlei, wie viele Himmel eingestürzt sind.

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

Well, as to that, all I'll say is, you can't take out a fellow's heart before he's ready to give it up.

He saw things in a way that others did not, so that a city I had lived in all my life seemed a different place, so that a woman became beautiful with the light on her face.

I did not mind the cold so much when he was there.

You're so calm and quiet, you never say. But there are things inside you. I see them sometimes, hiding in your eyes.

Yes, well, life is a folly. If you live long enough, nothing is surprising.

I had walked along that street all my life, but had never been so aware that my back was to my home.

It was not a house where secrets could be kept easily.

"Well," Lockwood said, "if you judge success by the number of enemies you make, that was a highly successful evening."

Dave: "You're not our leader."
Lucy: "No, but I know what I'm doing, which is a nice alternative."

Lockwood: "Never touch a mummified body part if you don't know where it's been. That's my motto."
George: "Holds true with unmummified ones too. That's the motto I live by."

According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Which is a little too permanent for my liking.

It was Nathaniel's boundless capacity for stating the obvious that made him so charmingly human.

"Really?"
"No. I'm being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember."
"Irony's cleverer, so you're probably being sarcastic."

It was a time of beginnings and a time of endings.

Stop worrying about the past. The past is for ghosts. We've all done things that we regret. It's what's ahead of us that counts.

"I warn you," the boy went on. "I am a magician of great power. I control many terrifying entities. This being you see before you" - here I rolled my shoulders back and puffed my chest up menacingly - "is but the meanest and least impressive of my slaves." (Here I slumped my shoulders and stuck my stomach out.)