Quotes By Letter: F

“'Long ago,' he said, 'long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.'”

-Winter Dreams, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Recommended by Suzanne.

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“...exaggerated turns of speech conceal mediocre affections: as if the fullness of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the human word is like a cracked cauldron upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the stars to pity.”

-Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

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“No matter! She was not happy, had never been so. Where did it come from, this feeling of deprivation, this instantaneous decay of things in which she put her trust? ... But, if there were somewhere a strong and beautiful creature, a valiant nature full of passion and delicacy in equal measure, the heart of a poet in the figure of an angel, a lyre with strings of steel, sounding to the skies elegiac epithalamia, why should she not, fortuitously, find such a one? What an impossibility! Nothing, anyway, was worth that great quest; it was all lies! Every smile concealed the yawn of boredom, every joy a malediction, every satisfaction brought its nausea, and even the most perfect kisses only leave upon the lips a fantastical craving for supreme pleasure.”

-Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

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“He sent her a look that was meant to be utterly soulful; but she just stood there, as if he had done nothing at all.”

-Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert

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“She was reading a slim volume with grey covers. The corners of her mouth moved every now and then, and a gleam of pleasure lit up her face. He felt jealous of the man whose writings she seemed to find so fascinating.”

-Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert

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“...There are only so many times that you can utter 'It does not hurt' before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt. You become enlightened of the feeling of feeling hurt, which is worse, I am certain, than the existent hurt.”

-Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

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“They exchanged notes, like children. My grandfather made his out of newspaper clippings and dropped them in her woven baskets, into which he knew only she would dare stick a hand. Meet me under the wooden bridge, and i will show you things you have never, ever seen. The 'M' was taken from the army that would take his mother's life: GERMAN FRONT ADVANCES ON SOVIET BORDER; the 'eet' from their approaching warships: NAZI FLEET DEFEATS FRENCH AT LESACS; the 'me' from the peninsula they were blue-eyeing: GERMANS SURROUND CRIMEA; the 'und' from too little, too late: AMERICAN WAR FUNDS REACH ENGLAND; the 'er' from the dog of dogs: HITLER RENDERS NONAGGRESSION PACT INOPERATIVE... and so on, and so on, each not a collage of love that could never be, and war that could.”

-Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

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“This was the world in which she grew and he aged. They made for themselves a sanctuary from Trachimbrod, a habitat completely unlike the rest of the world. No hateful words were ever spoken, and no hands raised. More than that, no angry words were ever spoken, and nothing was denied. But more than that, no unloving words were ever spoken, and everything was held up as another small piece of proof that it can be this way, it doesn't have to be that way; if there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it heavy walls, and we will furnish it with soft red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweler's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.”

-Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

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“Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

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“I thought about all of the things that everyone ever says to each other, and how everyone is going to die, whether it's in a millisecond, or days, or months, or 76.5 years, if you were just born. Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped.”

-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

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“When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?”

-Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

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“She saw the future, she heard voices from inside
The kind of voices she would soon learn to deny
Because at home they got her slapped.”

-Zak and Sara, Ben Folds

Recommended by Sushima.

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“I will set you free, to roam in lands far away, and hope you return. If and when you do come back, I shall hold you, and kiss you to make my world right. And then I will set you free once more.”

-Anne Forehand

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“You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.”

-A Room With A View, E.M. Forster

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“Such people. I must have stood next to them in the tube, passed them in the street, of course I overheard them and knew they existed. But never really believed they exist. So totally blind. It never seemed possible.”

-The Collector, John Fowles

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“He felt his clumsiness, his stiffness, her greater dignity than his; perhaps he still felt her lips.”

-The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles

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“It was not only her profound ignorance of the reality of copulation that frightened her; it was the aura of pain and brutality that the act seemed to require, and which seemed to deny all the gentleness of gesture and discreetness of permitted caress that so attracted her in Charles. She had once or twice seen animals couple; the violence haunted her mind.”

-The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles

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“Will you be my anchor
When there is no-one around to hold me down
Will you be my anchor
I know you're not the answer.”

-Angel At My Table, The Frames

Recommended by Ronan.

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“...the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”

-The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank

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“I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

-The Diary of Anne Frank, Anne Frank

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“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

-An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin

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“When a man gets up to speak, people listen, then look. When a woman gets up people look, then if they like what they see, they listen.”

-Pauline Frederick

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“It is soft and warm and I am not soft or warm but I imagine that it would be nice to be that way. I have never known it. I know a cold, hard, raging Fury deep inside of me and I am tired of it. I am tired of the feeling, I want to die so I don't have to feel it anymore. I would like to be soft and warm. I would be terrified to be that way. I could be hurt if I were soft and warm. I could be hurt by something other than myself. It is harder to be soft than it is to be hard. I could be hurt by something other than myself.”

-A Million Little Pieces, James Frey

Recommended by jo.

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“Beauty disguises what it's holding back
Some days when her eyes shine, her thoughts are black.”

-Melancholy Baby, Gavin Friday

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“My disbelief. My fake redemption.
My twentieth century.
My holy war. My self indulgence.
My twentieth century.
My human flesh. My sad dependence.
My twentieth century.”

-My 20th Century, Gavin Friday

Recommended by Shay.

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