“No hay hada que te haga sentir más sola que pasar el resto de tu vida con alguien con quien no se pueda hablar, o peor, con alguien con quien no se pueda estar en silencio.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“قراءة الكتب الجيدة .. تفسد استمتاعك بالكتب الرديئة”
“Visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.”
“Thousands of those men and boys died here, and I have recently learned that their inhuman treatment was the intended policy of Himmler. He called his plan Death by Exhaustion, and he implemented it. Work them hard, don't waste valuable foodstuffs on them, and let them die. They could, and would, always be replaced by new slave workers from Europe's Occupied countries.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“They came here on Sunday, 30th June, 1940, after bombing us two days before. They said they hadn't meant to bomb us; they mistook our tomato lorries on the pier for army trucks. How they came to think that strains the mind. They bombed us, killing some thirty men, women, and children - one among them was my cousin's boy. He had sheltered underneath his lorry when he first saw the planes dropping bombs, and it exploded and caught fire. They killed men in their lifeboats at sea. They strafed the Red Cross ambulances carrying our wounded. When no one shot back at them, they saw the British had left us undefended. They just flew in peaceably two days later and occupied us for five years.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Nessuna persona sana di mente potrebbe aprire una libreria o farci il commesso per soldi. La spinta è solo un profondo amore per la lettura e per i lettori. Oltre al privilegio di conoscere le novità editoriali.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“How could I ever have considered marrying him? One year as his wife, and I'd have become one of those abject, quaking women who look at their husbands when someone asks them a question. I've always despised that type, but I see how it happens now.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Peut-être les livres possèdent-ils un instinct de préservation secret qui les guide jusqu'à leur lecteur idéal.”
“Women like poetry. A soft word in their ears and they melt - a grease spot on the grass.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein-- side by side with... visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said, "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and nexe year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“Treat a dog right and he'll treat you right - he'll keep you company, be your friend, never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against them.”
“If there is Predestination, then God is the devil. by Remy, Ravensbruck concentration camp survivor”
“Miss X has always been a ditherer -- she was a ten month baby and has not improved in any material way since then.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet...it's a tuba among the flutes.”
“It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don't really know what they're after--they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher's blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?”
“Because there is nothing I would rather do than rummage through bookshops, I went at once to Hastings & Sons Bookshop upon receiving your letter. I have gone to them for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn't known I wanted.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“We read books, talked books, argued over books and became dearer and dearer to one another.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“I much prefer whining to counting my blessings.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. How awful, backward, cowardly, and mentally warped that will be if it turns out to be true.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“After all, what's good enough for Austen ought to be good enough for anyone.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers-- booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one-- the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it-- along with first dibs on the new books.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“Then i imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“one year as his wife, and id have become one of those abject, quaking women who look at their husbands when someone asks them a question. I've always despised that type, but I see how it happens now”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!”
“Isn't that something-to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I hada soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“In a good mood I call my hair Chestnut with Gold Glints. In a bad mood, I call it mousy brown”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Moses: God or crowd control?!?”
“Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“People don't know how chickens can turn on you, but they can -- just like mad dogs.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“I believe I am becoming pathetic. I'll go further, I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarryman/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Perhaps tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn't love me back - may, even, care for Remy- but at this precise moment I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“His writings have made me his friend.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Do you suppose the St. Swithin's furnace-man was my one true love? Since I never spoke to him, it seems unlikely, but at least it was a passion unscathed by disappointment.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Will Thisbee gave me The Beginner's Cook-Book for Girl Guides. It was just the thing; the writer assumes you know nothing about cookery and writes useful hints - "When adding eggs, break the shells first.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
“My worries travel around in my head on their well worn path”
“Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I'll show you a man who hates his neighbours more! He'd have to – you wouldn't grant anyone else something you can't have for yourself – no love, no kindness, no respect!”
“Now that I think about it, maybe he is a werewolf. I can picture him lunging over the moors in hot pursuit of his prey, and I'm certain that he wouldn't think twice about eating an innocent bystander. I'll watch him closely at the next full moon. He's asked me to go dancing tomorrow--perhaps I should wear a high collar. Oh, that's vampires, isn't it? I think I am a little giddy. (After meeting Mr. Markham V. Reynolds, Jr.)”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don't ever let anyone tell you different.”
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel
