Top Ten Tuesday: Book Quotes Celebrating Life

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. This week’s topic is “Book Quotes that Fit X Theme”. I chose to do some book quotes about life that I enjoy.

I really wanted to choose quotes about how wonderful life can be and how hungry we can be for life and love and how holding on that will keep us young. I definitely have had a lot of blue phases in my life and I think it’s important to find the words for the times that drag us out of them, kicking and screaming.

• 

• 

• 

“This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.”

― Justin Cronin, The Twelve

“We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more.”

― Justin Torres, We the Animals

“We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows–a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we. We are oddities, sideshows, talk show subjects. We capture everyone’s imagination.”

― Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

• 

• 

• 

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.”

― Richard Siken, Crush

“I know loving me isn’t easy – the all-night

helicopter parties, the glow-in-the-dark haircuts, but when I look at you

it’s like praying with my eyes. I know it’s stupid to not own a gun yet have

so many triggers, but in some other world gigantic seashells hold humans

to their ears and listen to the echo of machines.”

― Jeffrey McDaniel, The Forgiveness Parade

• 

• 

• 

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

― Mary Oliver, Devotions

“I feel like I could eat the world raw.”

― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”

― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

• 

• 

• 

“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it — to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just once. ”

― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

― E.E. Cummings, E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

• 

• 

• 

Don’t we all feel we have something banked down deep inside just waiting for its moment, the slow gathering of hot blood?

― Megan Abbott, Give Me Your Hand

“I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.”

― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain from you your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you, and let it devour your remains.

For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.

― Charles Bukowski

---

Did anyone do this tag? Share it below with me! And…

Until next time,