I haven’t felt much like writing lately, but I hope that another Tuesday with The Broke and the Bookish will serve as a bit of inspiration.  This week is inspiring quotes from books.  I’ve gathered at least a few that stick out for me, even if I’m not quite up to ten.

1.  Do you think I am an automaton?-a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched form my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart!   And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.  I am not talking to you now through the medium custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God’s feet, equal – as we are!”  —Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte always takes the cake.

2.  “But you know, Matilda, you cannot pretend to read a book.  Your eyes will give you away.  So will your breathing.  A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.  The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wall-paper is in flames.  For me, Matilda, Great Expectations is such a book.  It gave me permission to change my life.” —Mr. Pip, by Lloyd Jones.  This was the last Christmas present my Uncle Bob gave me before he died (though I’m sure my aunt had a hand in the purchasing). However, this quote summarizes the impact of reading on the reader, quite nicely.

3.  When movement has been banished from a nature that seeks its continuity, when it becomes renegade and remarkable by virtue of its very discontinuity, it attains the level of esthetic creation.  Because art is life, playing to other rhythms. —The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery as translated by Alison Anderson.

4.  Whatever happens. Whatever
     what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.       —“Prayer”,  by Galway Kinnell.

5.  “No. This is where I have always been coming to.  Since my time began.  And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run.  But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.”  —Possession: A Romance, by A.S. Byatt.