Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl!

This week is all about our favorite book quotes! I have more quotes than books; some books just needed more space on here I guess.

First up is Watership Down, with multiple quotes. My favorite book of all time!

“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse—the cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Men will never rest till they’ve spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

Ok, I will move on now.

“So we dream on. Thus we invent our lives. We give ourselves a sainted mother, we make our father a hero; and someone’s older brother and someone’s older sister – they become our heroes too. We invent what we love and what we fear. There is always a brave lost brother – and a little lost sister, too. We dream on and on: the best hotel, the perfect family, the resort life. And our dreams escape us almost as vividly as we can imagine them… That’s what happens, like it or not. And because that’s what happens, this is what we need: we need a good, smart bear… Coach Bob knew it all along: you’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You have to keep passing the open windows.”
― John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

“This place has atmosphere, different from a bookshop with just new books. In here you sense the weight of time, stretching way back to the past.”
― Michiko Aoyama, What You Are Looking for is in the Library

“Hate is loud, but I think you’ll learn it’s because it’s only a few people shouting, desperate to be heard. You might not ever be able to change their minds, but so long as you remember you’re not alone, you will overcome.” – TJ Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

I am adding some in from The Last Unicorn as I am reading and annotating this book right now. I have always loved the book and the movie, ever since seeing it as a child.

“Unicorns are immortal. It is their nature to live alone in one place: usually a forest where there is a pool clear enough for them to see themselves-for they are a little vain, knowing themselves to be the most beautiful creatures in all the world, and magic besides. They mate very rarely, and no place is more enchanted than one where a unicorn has been born. The last time she had seen another unicorn the young virgins who still came seeking her now and then had called to her in a different tongue; but then, she had no idea of months and years and centuries, or even of seasons. It was always spring in her forest, because she lived there, and she wandered all day among the great beech trees, keeping watch over the animals that lived in the ground and under bushes, in nests and caves, earths and treetops. Generation after generation, wolves and rabbits alike, they hunted and loved and had children and died, and as the unicorn did none of these things, she never grew tired of watching them.”
― Peter S. Beagle , The Last Unicorn

“Farewell,’ she said. ‘I hope you hear many more songs’ – which was the best way she could think of to say good-bye to a butterfly.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch’s door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

I wouldn’t say these quotes (except for the Watership Down ones) are my top ten favorites of all time, but these are the ones I was feeling this week. Have you read any of these books? Are you an annotator? It is something I just started doing and I am really enjoying it.