I’m continuing to run with this Top Ten Tuesday idea from The Broke and the Bookish; here’s a third installment of quotes from books I’ve read (semi-)recently. (See Part one | Part two.) This set spans my reading from June 2015 back to January 2015 (I’m going in reverse chronological order). Most of these are from adult literary fiction, but there are two from children’s books (actually three, there’s a bonus one from Harriet the Spy), one from a memoir, one from a classic, and one from a nonfiction book about the Finnish educational system.

1. He wanted to travel but lacked any desire to arrive. –The Waterproof Bible, Andrew Kaufman
2. “The hardest part of making a sacrifice isn’t the moment when you do it. That’s the easiest. You’re too busy being proud of yourself for being so noble. What’s hard is the day after that and the following one and all of those days to come. It’s needing to make that sacrifice over and over again, the rest of your life, while in your mind, you can still taste that which you lost. Or what you think you lost.” –Mambo in Chinatown, Jean Kwok
3. I remembered my memory of the moment, because after so long that’s what memory is: the replaying of a filmstrip that’s slightly warped from having gone through the projector so many times. I’ll never know what actually happened and what distortions I added. –The Children’s Crusade, Ann Packer
4. What we read as adults should be read, I think, with no warnings or alerts beyond, perhaps: enter at your own risk. -“Little Triggers,” Trigger Warning, Neil Gaiman
5. She never minded admitting she didn’t know something. So what, she thought; I could always learn. 5.5 Is everybody a different person when they are with somebody else? –Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh
6. People who called her a pest did not understand that a littler person sometimes had to be a little bit noisier and a little bit more stubborn in order to be noticed at all. –Ramona the Pest, Beverly Cleary
7. I can’t imagine a better example of Things to Be Wary Of in the food department than bargain sushi. –Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
8. Disappointed a hundred times, she still hoped. –Howards End, E.M. Forster
9. I did not think I had rooms enough in me for this kind of love. –Vanessa and Her Sister, Priya Parmar
10. It is better to have a dream of your own than to rent one from others. –Finnish Lessons, Pasi Sahlberg

Do these quotes stand alone, or do they need context? Which one(s) do you like best?

Here’s a Top Ten Tuesday feature from The Broke and the Bookish that I’m going to run with for weeks, months, quite possibly years: Quotes from Books I’ve Read Recently. As usual I read Linda’s Top Ten at Three Good Rats and got inspired. I write down quotes from nearly every book I read and keep them in my LibraryThing account, but I don’t often go back and look through them; here’s a great opportunity to do just that, at a time when saving time by recycling content is the perfect way to avoid complete radio silence on this blog (see: new baby in the house).

Here are ten quotes from books I’ve read recently. I chose these because they struck me as wise or poetic or true or funny, or all of the above.

1. Every generation assumes that the way it does things is the way things are. –Unfinished Business, Anne-Marie Slaughter
2. What she doesn’t know yet is that ending a relationship cannot be done in one conversation over one evening, that such extrication takes days and months and sometimes years. –My Lover’s Lover, Maggie O’Farrell
3. “Your relatives are famous betrayers,” Penny argues. “There was a time in the 1700s when they weren’t even allowed to sign contracts.”–Carry On, Rainbow Rowell
4. The minute hand of the clock was a terribly slow lever, pushing the hour hand imperceptibly forward.  –George, Alex Gino
5. Memory is strange – part movie, part dream. You can never know if what you remember is the essential thing or something else entirely, a grace note. –The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, Ann Packer
6. There were musicians who never looked up from their hands or their instruments, but she’d seen quartets of straight men gaze at each other like they were making love. -“Cross,” Music For Wartime, Rebecca Makkai
7. The choices don’t stop….Life is choices, and they are relentless. No sooner have you made one choice than another is upon you. –Being Mortal, Atul Gawande
8. You could think of promises as a series of nets: some hold for a lifetime; others give way, surprisingly flimsy, in no time at all. –And the Dark Sacred Night, Julia Glass
9. It is fairly amazing that we don’t get poisoned more often. –At Home, Bill Bryson
10. “There are four things that lead to wisdom….four sentences…[:]I don’t know. I need help. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”-Still Life, Louise Penny
    

More to come, in reverse chronological order from when I read them. What’s your favorite quote from a book?