15 Great Quotes From Books

Being a reader is not only to read and to rate books, but it is also to collect many great quotes. Books have a special and sometimes a poetic language and you always find at least a sentence that catches your mind and never leaves your side. Today I am going to share with you 15 quotes that did this to me. I apologize in advance if you recognize many of these quotes, but if you know about them they must truly be great. 

To shorten the list I have kept to only one quote per book. Otherwise, it would probably be filled with quotes from J.K Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien. There are also many more great quotes out there, these are just 15 of them. If you want more you should check out Goodreads, because that's kind of the home for books, bookish quotes, and bookish people. Lastly, remember to mark that line with words in the book you are reading that you stopped to read a second time. That quote could change your view of life.

1. "Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."

– Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

2. "Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

3. "All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."

— J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

4. "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray

5. "Anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for."

– Joseph Heller, Catch-22

6. "I don't want to die without any scars."

- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

7. “Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.” 

- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

8. “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

- Jack Kerouac, On The Road

9. “As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

— John Green, The Fault In Our Stars 

10. “Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” 

- William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

11. “Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.” 

- Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons

12. "We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories." 

- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

13. “He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

14. "The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."

- Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

15. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

- Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

The Phantom of the Opera | Book Review

Author: Gaston Leroux
Pages: 360
My rating: 3/5 

Goodreads Description 
First published in French as a serial in 1909, The Phantom of the Opera is a riveting story that revolves around the young, Swedish Christine Daaé. Her father, a famous musician, dies, and she is raised in the Paris Opera House with his dying promise of a protective angel of music to guide her. After a time at the opera house, she begins hearing a voice, who eventually teaches her how to sing beautifully. All goes well until Christine's childhood friend Raoul comes to visit his parents, who are patrons of the opera, and he sees Christine when she begins successfully singing on the stage. The voice, who is the deformed, murderous 'ghost' of the opera house named Erik, however, grows violent in his terrible jealousy, until Christine suddenly disappears. The phantom is in love, but it can only spell disaster.
Leroux's work, with characters ranging from the spoiled prima donna Carlotta to the mysterious Persian from Erik's past, has been immortalized by memorable adaptations. Despite this, it remains a remarkable piece of Gothic horror literature in and of itself, deeper and darker than any version that follows.

My Thoughts
The Phantom of the Opera is an interesting book with a mysterious touch to it. However, I already knew the plot before reading this, because of the movie/musical. The book was very different from the movie. I still had the same dark and mystic vibes from it, but in the book they had a new, for me, way of looking at the Opera Ghost. There was something more terrifying about his actions and choices in the book. The difference between the forgiveness given to the Opera Ghost in the book versus the movie is quite grand. In the movie, I felt more sorry for the Opera Ghost, because they painted a vivid picture of his heartbreaking background. In the book, he seems to have always been causing chaos.

The characters were not exactly the best and sadly I didn't feel for Christine Daaé and Viscount Raoul de Chagny's love as much as I would have wanted to. I do not mean to be too harsh, but it seems sort of made up in my eyes. I felt kind of sorry for Raoul though, because not only is he madly in love, but he is also in grave danger because of that love. And Christine was not a very likable character. I really liked her in the movie, but not so much in the book, except for one thing that she did. I can't say more than that in order to keep you unspoiled. But Raoul was very hurt in the process of this book, both by everything that went down and mostly by the love he had for Christine.

The plot was intriguing and in time I started to really like Raoul and the Persian. The scenery is also amazing and graphic. I love the opera and all of the history that lays in it. The language is old and a bit academic. Overall I did actually enjoy reading this novel, even though I didn't like Christine as much as I did in the movie. It was interesting to see how the story plays out in the book, compared to the film/musical.

Something I want to briefly discuss is the fact that the Opera Ghost is also called "Angel of Music." It might sound like Gaston Leroux is trying to embellish the ghost, but actually, it makes him appear as even more cruel and evil. Did you know that Lucifer sometimes has the title as the Angle of Music? It is said that he is the first fallen angel and that he was the head of the ministry of music in heaven. This is something I found out after finishing the book and something that I cannot let go of. Comparing the Opera Ghost with Lucifer could either be a genius move by Leroux or an incredibly wrong one. I am definitely going to read up on this.

Lastly I want to let you know that I didn't give this book the highest rating, because I struggled with it a lot and it wasn't as great as I thought it would be. But the actual story is very dark and interesting and I would still recommend it if you would like to read about an Opera in Paris, strange happenings, murder, love, sacrifice and of course the famous Opera Ghost or as he is also called "Angel of Music."

Confessions of a Reader | #2

 - The Weird Habits -

I hope I am not alone on these things. But I think a lot of fellow readers do these things on the list. It's not that weird for us, but it might be for people who don't understand.

• When visiting someone you check out their bookshelves.

Why? Because you have to. You might be able to tell what kind of person you are visiting by browsing their shelves. I do this all the time.

• Not watching a movie until you have read the book.

I am sorry friends and family that we don't have anything to watch because I want to read the book first. This happens all of the time and because  I have so many books to read, it can take a while before I am ready to watch the movie and by then my friends have already seen it. It is not only new releases...  I still have not read The Murder on the Orient Express or Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. My family wants to see the movies, but I can't because I still haven't gotten to the books.

• When dropping a book, you act like someone dropping their phone, a slight heart attack.

I get so scared that the book will be ruined when I pick it up. Most of the time though, the books are just fine.

• Hugging, touching and smelling your books.

Uhh... yeah. This happens. Next...

• When you spot another reader you have to know what they are reading, so you act like a creep just staring at them.

I can't help it. I have to know what book they are reading. I did this only two days ago. I saw a guy reading a book that I recognized as Eld (Engelfors #2) by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren. I think he caught me staring...