34 Quotes About Poignant

People don't change. People who change are the ones who accept it.

1
So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon’tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-I’veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme….There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bunch of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string. The practice of attaching cups to the ends of string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world’s first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.When the world grew bigger, and there wasn’t enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented. Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person’s silence. Nicole Krauss
2
I’m not sure. But there’s something about the darkness, the stillness of this hour, I think, that creates a language of its own. There’s a strange kind of freedom in the dark; a terrifying vulnerability we allow ourselves at exactly the wrong moment, tricked by the darkness into thinking it will keep our secrets. We forget that the blackness is not a blanket; we forget that the sun will soon rise. But in the moment, at least, we feel brave enough to say things we’d never say in the light. Tahereh Mafi
3
Mallory dropped her head to the steering wheel. "Look, I'm mad at you, okay? This isn't about me. I know my painful memories are relative. My life is good. I'm lucky. This isn't about how poor little Mallory has had it so hard. I'm not falling apart or anything." He stroked a hand down her back. "Of course you're not. You're just holding the steering wheel up with your head for a minute, that's all. Jill Shalvis
4
My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain... There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. Chief Seattle
5
Ah, yeah. Yeah, tis awful all right. Well, your Mam wanted me to talk to you about it, but…’ He stopped; he didn’t know what else to say.‘ Yeah? Ah, I know the score, Dad. She wants me to be careful, is it?’‘ Ah, no. Well, yeah; there’s that, of course. No, she wanted… well, if you’d any questions, youknow?’ I wasn’t sure if he wanted me to say yes, or if he just wanted me to say no, and save himhaving to be awkward. He looked lost. I felt like I wanted to save him‘ No, I’ve no questions, Dad. It’s all right, shur.’ He looked at me then. His eyes went wet, likehe was going to start bawling. If we were in a film, he might have hugged me. But we were in Limerick, so he just said:‘ Well, so, ’ and put his one glove back on. From The Boys of Summer. Unknown
6
But one day, when Toby is old enough, I will take down a shoe box from a shelf where it is kept, and I will tell him again the story of his sister, Isabel Margaret Cavendish, the girl who came before. J.P. Delaney
7
We all have the best laid plans for our children, and they go and ruin it all by growing up any way they want to. What the hell was it all for, then? (Real Life and Liars) Kristina Riggle
8
It seems to me that our lives are consumed by countless wasting years, but only a few shining moments. I missed mine. Yes is what I should have said. Of course I should have said yes. Mordecai Richler
9
I did so want to hear a singer. I miss the sound of a woman's voice, the way they look and smell. J.A. Willoughby
10
This here is your inheritance, says the senior partner. Yes, he says, Ludwig, I know, and stows the plan for the bathing house (5.5m long, 3.8m wide, outer wall construction: wood, roof construction: thatch), stows both the plan and the mosquito in his briefcase. On a German shelf, this mosquito, pressed flat between large quantities of paper, will outlast time and times, and one day it might even be petrified, who knows. Jenny Erpenbeck
11
For it is now to us itself ancient; and yet its maker was telling of things already old and weighted with regret, and he expended his art in making keen that touch upon the heart which sorrows have that are both poignant and remote. J.r.r. Tolkien
12
Will I begin it? said Doyler laughing. That's all that's in it, he laughing said. Oh sure that grin. Oh sure that wonderful saucerful grin. Jim sat on the grass and he plucked at the blades. He knew for certain sure that Doyler would be turning from him again. He said, You'll be walking away from me soon, won't you now? There was no answer. Jim plucked the grass and stared beyond where the waves broke on the island shore. He said, I wish you wouldn't Doyler. It does break my heart when you walk away. Old pal o' me heart, said Doyler.But already he had turned, and he was walking away. Walking that slow dreadful slope with never a leaf or a stone. Walking; and though Jim tried to keep pace, e could not, and sometimes he called out, Doyler! Doyler! but he never heard or he did not heed, only farther and farther he walked away. And when Jim woke from these dreams, if he did not remember, he knew he had dreamt, for the feeling inside him of not feeling at all. And it was hard then to make his day. Jamie ONeill
13
The Ache That Would Not LeaveBehind the hum and routine of daily living, there lay a persistent and wild longing for something she could not easily put into words. It felt like impulsive adventures and watching the sun rise over unfamiliar mountains, or coffee in a street café, set to the background music of a foreign language. It was the smell of the ocean, with dizzying seagulls whirling in a cobalt sky; exotic foods and strange faces, in a city where no one knew her name. She wanted secrets whispered at midnight, and road trips without a map, but most of all, she ached for someone who desired to explore the mysteries that lay sleeping within her. The truly heartbreaking part was that she could feel the remaining days of her life falling away, like leaves from an autumn tree, but still this mysterious person who held the key to unlock her secrets did not arrive; they were missing, and she knew not where to find them. John Mark Green
14
There is, after all, no pleasure like that given by a woman who really wants to see you. Anthony Powell
15
It's a trick question, Aquilla. A Mask is not made. She is remade. First she is destroyed. Stripped down to the trembling child that lives at her core. It doesn't matter how strong she thinks she is. Blackcliff diminishes, humiliates, and humbles her." "But if she survives, she is reborn. She rises from the shadow world of failure and despair so that she might become as fearful as that which destroyed her. So that she might know darkness and use it as her scim and shield in her mission to serve the Empire. Sabaa Tahir
16
...you realize that you don't understand yourself any better than you understand anyone else. Jonathan Tropper
17
The machines of this place are failing, and the woman and I are here all alone. The perpetual motion engine, as brilliant and beautiful as it is, is running down–nothing lasts forever. But before this little world falls out of the sky there still might be time enough for redemption. There is still time for me to say the words that I should have had the courage to say at the beginning. There is still time, perhaps, for one more miracle. Hello, Miranda. Dexter Palmer
18
There is a blue bird in my heart that wants to get out. Charles Bukowski
19
He was the friend of my life. You know, you only have one friend like that; there can't be two. James Salter
20
She knows there are traps everywhere that can make her cry, she knows the way she dies a little every time someone asks her for change and she doesn't give it to them means that she's too soft for this world or perhaps just for this city, she feels so small here. Unknown
21
I guess you have to born in the Pit to find light where there isn’t any. S.M. McEachern
22
Make love to me, ” she whispered. “If you make love to me then it is two of us. There is just one of him when he takes my blood, but we are two.” “We are two and more than two, ” he whispered in her ear, and then he lifted her and carried her to the bed. Louise Murphy
23
We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything. William Golding
24
They've never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove to Washington the traffic was so bad that I could have made better time with a horse. Madeleine LEngle
25
The people they had been last summer, the person she had been-- Dicey guessed she'd never be afraid again, not the way she had been all summer. She had taken care of them all, sometimes well, sometimes badly. And they had covered the distances. For most of the summer, they had been unattached. Nobody knew who they were or what they were doing. It didn't matter what they did, as long as they all stayed together. Dicey remembered that feeling, of having things pretty much her own way. And she remembered the feelings of danger. It was a little bit like being a wild animal, she thought to herself. Dicey missed that wildness. She knew she would never have it again. And she missed the sense of Dicey Tillerman against the whole world and doing all right. Cynthia Voigt
26
A faint tear wet Meiko's eye, so slight a bit of moisture that it passed unseen by Yasuko. Yet all the anguish of which she never spoke was compressed into that single drop Fumiko Enchi
27
Come, sir, come, I'll wrestle with you in my strength of love. Look, here I have you, thus I let you go, And give you to the gods. William Shakespeare
28
Seulement la terre qui obéit, sait bien qu'elle tourne en rond, tandis que nous vers l'infininous précipitons. Translation: But the obedient Earth well knowsthat she moves round and round, whereas we hurtle downtoward infinity. Rainer Maria Rilke
29
Someday you will die. Because you are embodied through and through, at that point you will cease to exist. You will not meet death, because, as the sage says, "Where death is I am not; where I am death is not, so we never meet." When you die there will no longer be any self that is you. Use your self while you have it. Owen J. Flanagan
30
She remembered something she overheard at a dinner party -- Everyone loses their mind at least once in this lifetime. Everyone. Lawren Leo
31
You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him. Dorothy Dunnett
32
I hate these affairs", he'd told her once, tearing up an engraved invitation to an exclusive charity ball. "They're the worst kind of discrimination. An invitation doesn't really mean that you're invited; it means that a whole lot of people aren't Melinda Cross
33
Later in life, I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity, which can be an insuperable barrier against advancement in almost any direction. However, in those days, choice between dignity and unsatisfied curiosity was less clear to me as a cruel decision that had to be made. Anthony Powell