Top Ten Tuesday - Literary Quotes

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme for bloggers who like books and lists.  It's awesome and is graciously hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Not sure these are the top ten quotes that have profoundly changed my life but they are quotes that spoken to me at some point. 


1) Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings had a number of wise things to say but my favorite is:

2) Holla to all my fellow introverts.  From Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg.

“I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It's the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself.”

3)   This is Logen Ninefingers mantra throughout The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie.

“Once you've got a task to do, it's better to do it than live with the fear of it.”

4) From Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my favorite installments in the Vorkosigan Saga.

 “Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.”

5) I have never read anything by Miriam Waddington and after searching I'm not even sure what work this quote comes from but I came across it on Goodreads and love it so hard.

“keep bees and grow asparagus.
listen to the wind
instead of the politicians,
make up your own stories
and believe them if you want to live
the good life”

 6) From Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature by Kathleen Dean Moore.

“There is wild comfort in the cycles and the intersecting circles, the rotations and revolutions, the growing and ebbing of this beautiful and strangely trustworthy world.”

7) Because no list of quotes is complete without one of my heroes Aldo Leopold. From Round River.

“The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”

8) From Jackaby by William Ritter.

“Jackaby, I was rapidly discovering had a way of opening that corner of my brain. It was a quiet little corner in which I had lived when I was younger. It was a corner in which anything was possible, where magic was not an improbable daydream, but an obvious fact-if still only just out of reach. In those days I had known there must be monsters in the world, but I would happily accept them, knowing that, by the same logic, there must also be wizards and wands and flying carpets. I had never really closed that part of my mind, just slowly stopped visiting it as I grew older. I had left it unlocked like the jumbled treasure room upstairs, waiting for someone to come poking about.”

9) Because I'm re-reading Harry Potter (By J.K. Rowling)...

"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good!"

10)  And to end on a bitter note... From Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. 

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”

 I think that's it for me.  I do feel bad ending with such a cynical quote but I do think it's pretty brilliant, if mostly unfair to the male sex.  I love quotes and look forward to seeing everybody elses' lists!