Erin Morgenstern famous quotes

Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Pain #Memories #Disappointment

Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Maidens #Cases #Capable

The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Unexpected #Finest #Pleasure

People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#People #Wish #Cases

Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Real #Writing #Eye

I have tried to let you go and I cannot. I cannot stop thinking of you. I cannot stop dreaming about you.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Dream #Thinking Of You #Lovers

I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Sister #Heart #Loss

It is likely to make us think we are not caged. We cannot feel the bars unless we push against them.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Thinking #Bars #Feels

You believe you could not live with the pain. Such pain is not lived with. It is only endured. I am sorry.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Sorry #Pain #Believe

This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#People #Magic #World

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Moving #Self #Blood

And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister's story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Community #Stories #May

I saw in details while she saw in scope. Not seeing the scope is why I am here and she is not. I took each element spearately and never looked to see that they never did fit together properly
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Together #Elements #Saws

I think looking forward will be better than looking back.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Thinking #Looking Forward #Looking Back

Follow your dreams Bailey. Be they Harvard or somehing else entirely. No matter what that father of yours says, or how loudly he might say it. He forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Dream #Father #Might

Grow up, Bailey." "That is precisely what I'm doing," Bailey says. "I don't care if you don't understand that. Staying here won't make me happy. It will make you happy because you're insipid and boring, and an insipid, boring life is enough for you. It's not enough for me. It will never be enough for me. So I'm leaving. Do me a favor and marry someone who will take decent care of the sheep.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Growing Up #Sheep #Leaving

Is it not that bad to be trapped somewhere, then? Depending on where you're trapped?" "I suppose it depends on how much you like the place you're trapped in," Widget says. "And how much you like whoever you're stuck there with," Poppet adds, kicking his black boot with her white one.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#White #Black #Add

Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Book #Dark #Sea

You don't have to be a chef or even a particularly good cook to experience proper kitchen alchemy: the moment when ingredients combine to form something more delectable than the sum of their parts.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Kitchen #Ingredients #Chef

Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Stones #Unexpected #Remember

I couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Real #Differences #Being Real

Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Soul #Circus #Ache

It's said that All Hallows' Eve is one of the nights when the veil between the worlds is thin - and whether you believe in such things or not, those roaming spirits probably believe in you, or at least acknowledge your existence, considering that it used to be their own. Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Halloween #Believe #Autumn

I'm a firm believer that lighting affects mood, and twinkly lights on strings bring something magical to occasions ranging from concerts to weddings, though I'm fond of using them as year-round home decor. There's a reason why they're sometimes called fairy lights. When the night is right, there aren't any strings at all.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Home #Night #Light

How are you managing to keep everyone from aging?” Celia asks after a while. “Very carefully,” Marco answers.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Answers #Aging #Celia

Wine is bottled poetry, he thinks.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Wine #Thinking

I wished for her,” he says.
-- Erin Morgenstern

Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Princess #Hero #Dragons

He reads histories and mythologies and fairy tales, wondering why it seems that only girls are ever swept away from their mundane lives on farms by knights or princes or wolves. It strikes him as unfair to not have the same fanciful opportunity himself. And he is not in the position to do any rescuing of his own.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Girl #Opportunity #Knights

If she were gone I would be nothing. You should think better of yourself than to settle for that.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Thinking #Would Be #Gone

He turns and walks away, moving so quickly that the candle flames shiver with the motion of the air. “I miss you,” Isobel says as he leaves, but the sentiment is crushed by the clatter of the beaded curtain falling closed behind him.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Moving #Fall #Flames

The boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies out sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that become intimately familiar beneath his ink-stained fingers, formed again and again in increasingly steady lines.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Book #Reading #Writing

Which tent is your favourite?" he asks. "The Ice Garden," Celia answers, without even pausing to consider. "Why is that?" Marco asks. "Because of the way it feels," she says. "It's like walking into a dream. As though it is someplace else entirely and not simply another tent...
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Dream #Garden #Ice

And then he tells her stories. Myths he learned from his instructor. Fantasies he created himself, inspired by bits and pieces of others read in archaic books with crackling spines.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Book #Stories #Pieces

Scent is often underestimated, when it can be the most evocative.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Scent #Underestimated

Are we going to discuss whatever it is you are here to discuss instead of dancing around it?” he asks. “I was never a particularly good dancer.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Dancing #Dancer

I am haunted by the ghost of my father, I think that should allow me to quote Hamlet as much as I please.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Father #Thinking #Ghost

He spends the majority of the evening in the company of Celia Bowen, whose elaborate gown changes color, shifting through a rainbow of hues to compliment whoever she is closest to.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Color #Rainbow #Majority

We are two different people, Ethan. Just because you could never decide which one of us you were in love with does not make us interchangeable.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Two #People #Doe

I have never lied, “ Mr. Barris counters, standing as well. “I do not share what I am not at liberty to say. I gave my word and I intend to keep it but I have never lied to you. You never even asked me, you assumed I knew nothing.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Liberty #Lied #Share

Why haven’t you asked me how I do my tricks?” Celia asks, once they have reached the point where she is certain he is not simply being polite about the matter. “Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better remain in the dark.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Dark #Wish #Matter

This is, in part, why there is less magic in the world today. Magic is secret and secrets are magic, after all, and years upon years of teaching and sharing magic and worse. Writing it down in fancy books that get all dusty with age has lessened it, removed its power bit by bit.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Book #Teaching #Writing

What happened?" Bailey asks. "That is somewhat difficult to explain," Tsukiko answers. "It is a long and complicated story." "And you're not going to tell me, are you?" She tilts her head a bit ... "No, I am not," she says. "Great," Bailey mutters under his breath... "The bonfire exploded? How?" "Remember when I said it was difficult to explain? That has not changed.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Long #Stories #Tilt

Is magic not enough to live for?
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Magic #Enough

I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Hands #Would Be #Legs

Esse quam videri," Celia says. "To be, rather than to seem.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Celia

Misdirection is one of my strengths,
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Misdirection

The night that seemed endless hours before is now slipping through your fingers, ticking by as it falls into the past and pushes you towards the future.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Fall #Past #Night

Perhaps it is controlling the chaos within more than the chaos without.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Chaos

I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Stories

I don;t think there's anything wrong with being a dreamer. There is not. But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Dream #Thinking #Way

All empires fall eventually. It is the way of things.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Fall #Empires #Way

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Soul #May #Tales

It is perhaps both a blessing and a curse that fictional worlds spring into my mind nearly fully formed and it takes quite a while to sift through everything to find the story.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Spring #Blessing #Mind

He forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Dream #Forget

Celia." he says without looking up at her, "why do we wind our watch?" "Because everything requires energy," she recites obediently, eyes still focused on her hand. "We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Eye #Hands #Wind

Widge can see the past." Poppet says suddenly. "That's why his stories are so good." "The past is easier," Widget says. "It's already there." "In the stars?" Bailey asks. "No." Widget says. "On people. The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on fingers. Some people can get rid of it but it's still there, the events and t hings that pushed you to where you are now.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Stars #Past #People

A woman I should like to think I know rather well and a woman I had always considered a mystery, are in fact the same person.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Thinking #Facts #Mystery

It is a matter of perspective, the difference between opponent and partner," Tsukiko says. "You step to the side and the same person can be either or both or something else entirely. It is difficult to know which face is true.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Differences #Perspective #Opponents

Love is fickle and fleeting," Tsukiko continues. "It is rarely a solid foundation for decisions to be made upon, in any game.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Love Is #Games #Decision

The Cloud Maze. “ An Excursion in Dimension A Climb Though the Firmament; There Is No Beginning There Is No End Enter Where You Please Leave When You Wish Have No Fear of Falling
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Fall #Clouds #Wish

There is so much that glows in the circus, from flames to lanterns to stars. I have heard the expression “trick of the light” applied to sights within Le Cirque des Reves so frequently that I sometimes suspect the entirety of the circus is itself a complex illusion of illumination” .
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Stars #Light #Sight

And there are really never endings, happy or otherwise.
-- Erin Morgenstern

Though I have seen a great deal of the sights, traveled a number of the available paths, there are always corners that remain unexplored, doors that remain unopened.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Sight #Doors #Numbers

I have had affairs that lasted decades and others that lasted for hours. I have loved princesses and peasants. And I suppose they loved me, each in their way.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Princess #Way #Affair

I’ve missed you,” he whispers softly. The air between them is electric as he leans in, gently brushing his lips against her neck. In the next room, the guests complain about the sudden increase in temperature. Fans are drawn from colorful bags, fluttering like tropical birds.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Air #Bird #Fans

Unusual yet beautiful. Provocative while remaining elegant.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Beautiful #Provocative #Unusual

Secrets have power, and that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Real #Secret #Important

It's helpful for me to get ideas - the physical action of painting. Sometimes it frees up your writer brain. It's nice for me now that the writing has become a serious career that painting can become more like a hobby.
-- Erin Morgenstern

#Nice #Writing #Careers