Famous Quotes & Sayings

Aidan Chambers Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 57 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Aidan Chambers.

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Famous Quotes By Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1752516

Fame, money and the size of the market are not very important to me. What is, is writing a book that is worth doing and then publishing it. I don't write books for entertainment, for people to pass the time then throw away. — Aidan Chambers

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And when someone else speaks your name you feel pleased. You feel wanted. You feel there. Alive. Even if they're saying your name with dislike, at least you know you're you, that you exist. — Aidan Chambers

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I don't just want to ban The Bomb. I want to ban all bombs, whatever, and all bombers, whoever, and all bombings, whyever. There have to be better ways of saying no and making changes. — Aidan Chambers

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I will not compromise on language or content. At 15, people can handle the same language as me, they're just as complicated as me and are very interested in thinking about important questions for the first time. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 598235

In all our times together so far, this was the first time I felt we were enjoying ourselves, without strain or any sense of difference of age or deference, concession or inequality. It was, I thought afterwards, the first time we had met as ourselves, untrammelled, unguarded and in tune. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 248264

But the bit I liked best was where it said it's impossible to define love because it takes so many forms and is so complicated. — Aidan Chambers

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I don't actually think "true love" is such a good term because love can only be true. If it isn't true it can't be love. — Aidan Chambers

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You have to know your own truth and stick to it. And never despair. Never give up. There's always hope. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 2023427

It's one of the great temptations, you see
wanting to prove the strength of your own faith by making others believe what you believe. It shows you're right.
But it doesn't prove anything of the sort. All it proves is that you're condescending and arrogant and good at doing what half-decent actors can do, or advertising agents, or pop stars, or politicians, or con men, or any of the professional persuaders. They sell illusions. And that's all they do. And they feel good when they succeed. That's what their lives depend on.
Which isn't true about religion. Or shouldn't be. Your belief shouldn't depend on what other people think about it. And it certainly should not depend on whether other people believe the same as you. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 726869

There are times when you don't know yourself. There are times when you don't want to know yourself. There are times when you want to be what you have never allowed yourself to be before. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1458300

Ah, clever clogs, but it will have happened in one of my alternative lives. You know
the lives hot-shot scientists tell us we are living at the same time as this one we know about. Which being so, how do you know that what happens in one of your alternative lives doesn't sometimes leak through into your consciousness in this life, and make you sad that you aren't living that particular alternative life instead of this one? Don't you sometimes feel depressed for no reason you can think of? I do. And maybe that's why. We've had a leak from an alternative life and want that life now. Like wanting an ice cream when you were little, which you knew was in the freezer, but your mom wouldn't let you have it. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1136890

Unfortunately, ... , all too often a joke tells the truth. — Aidan Chambers

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He thought: How difficult it is to explain yourself to yourself. Sometimes there only is, and no knowing. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1791007

All the time I think I can never love you more than I already do. And then you do something or say something, and I love you more than ever. Like just now. Like now. How is it possible? Can you love someone more and more and at the same time, all the time, love them as much as it's possible to love someone? — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1686599

I asked Geertrui the other day what she thought love is-real love, true love. She said that for her real love is observing another person and being observed by another person with complete attention. If she's right, you only have to look at the pictures Rembrandt painted of Titus, and there are quite a lot, to see that they loved each other. Because that is what you're seeing. Complete attention, one of the other ... "but in that case," he said, speaking the words as the thought came to him, "all art is love, because all art is about looking closely, isn't it? Looking closely at what's being painted."
"The artist looking closely while he paints, the viewer looking closely at what has been painted. I agree. All true art, yes. Painting, Writing-literature-also. I think it is. And bad art is a failure to observe with complete attention. So, you see why I like the history of art. It's the study of how to observe life with complete attention. It's the history of love. — Aidan Chambers

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Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don't do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get a chance again. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 2244241

I cannot live without reading. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1524036

No, but still, the fact is, at least this is how it seems to me, everybody has to learn about it [love] from scratch for themselves. And we all make the same mistakes time and again while we're learning. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1675748

Readers are made by readers - it is so obvious it is almost banal to say it. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 2019187

Love: that which cannot be done without; wish always to be with, be part of, belong to, know intimately inside and out, entirely, WHOLE-LY, for ever and ever amen.
Shining bright words in amazing patterns of endless variety. Drawing of the inside of my head.
pg. 108 — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1607085

Maybe we should always start everything from the inside and work to the outside, and not from the outside to the inside. What d'you think? — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1553987

The demons of the Devil don't use your weak weaknesses against you, they use your strong ones. If you're rational and logical, they argue their case rationally and logically. If you're loyal and faithful, they turn those against you. If you're passionate and emotional, they make you passionate and emotional about your worse fears. Your weak weaknesses are no use to them ... They find the strongest weaknesses you didn't know were yours and use those against you. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1704346

And trust dies from ifs and buts — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1755214

A joy that hurts with sadness a sadness that is pleasurable a pleasure full of terror a terror that excites an excitement that calms a calmness that frightens. — Aidan Chambers

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You become a reader by reading the literature, not by reading the handbooks about it. — Aidan Chambers

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I huff and puff and struggle with every sentence, paragraph and page - sometimes every word as well. — Aidan Chambers

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We resent being faced with facts we'd prefer to ignore as much as being wrongly accused of doing something we haven't. — Aidan Chambers

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Readers are made by readers. — Aidan Chambers

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When you are in your teenage years you are consciously experiencing everything for the first time, so adolescent stories are all beginnings. There are never any endings. — Aidan Chambers

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Self pity is a disease which does not kill but corrodes. — Aidan Chambers

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Rooms are a fixed size, which can't be altered without pulling down walls and building new ones. They should be unchanging in shape and proportions. But sometimes they do change depending on who's in them. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 2212850

What a need we humans have for confession. To a priest, to a friend, to a psychoanalyst, to a relative, to an enemy, even to a torturer when there is no one else, it doesn't matter so long as we speak out what moves within us. Even the most secretive of us do it, if no more than writing in a private diary. And I have often thought as I read stories and novels and poems, especially poems, that they are no more than authors' confessions transformed by their art into something that confesses for us all. Indeed, looking back on my life-long passion for reading, the one activity that has kept me going and given me the most and only lasting pleasure, I think this is the reason that explains why it means so much to me. The books, the authors who matter the most are those who speak to me and speak for me all those things about life I most need to hear as the confession of myself. — Aidan Chambers

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Life is not like a novel, but a novel can be like life. The best ones always are. — Aidan Chambers

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History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past. — Aidan Chambers

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The plain unwelcome fact is that sometimes life stymies you. — Aidan Chambers

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The most memorable people in life will be the friends who loved you when you weren't very lovable. — Aidan Chambers

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Yet, isn't it strange, isn't it weird, how we can KNOW that someone is not behaving in the way we imagine, and at the same time we can be totally convinced that he is! How clever the human mind is, that it can accept two contradictory things as 'facts.' Yes, I know that in this case one 'fact' was untrue. But the human mind can KNOW something is untrue and still accept it as a 'fact,' and act on it as if it were true. — Aidan Chambers

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Is it better to go with the flow or let the flow go? — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 496913

Love, being in love, isn't a constant thing. It doesn't always flow at the same strength. It's not always like a river in flood. It's more like the sea. It has tides, it ebbs and flows. The thing is, when love is real, whether it's ebbing or flowing, it's always there, it never goes away. And that's the only proof you can have that it is real, and not just a crush or an infatuation or a passing fancy — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 586044

She was
I keep using the past tense; I ought to say she is
one of those people who, at first sight, look plain, are quiet, unassertive, unmemorable even. But who, when they start to talk and you get to know them, become more and more attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact they are beautiful. Not conventionally beautiful, not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through. — Aidan Chambers

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If we try to measure Now, we find it's always gone, has become part of the past. — Aidan Chambers

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You get to be wiser by storying the world and seeing it through other forms of consciousness than your own. — Aidan Chambers

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However much you love somebody, you should always keep a part of yourself to yourself. Never give it all. You can never be yourself otherwise. — Aidan Chambers

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Things it helps me to remember
When in a bad mood, keep quiet or still.
Baggy jumpers don't suit you.
When you're tired you get doubtful.
Difficulties come in spurts.
Listen to the echo of your own voice. Avoid be strident.
All aeroplanes go through clouds during their journeys. So do people during theirs.
Often greater clarity comes out of confusion. You have to be puzzled before you find a solution.
PMS often brings on a crisis of confidence.
Ordinariness is restful.
If someone is explosive in front of you, be silent. If you feel explosive, be silent. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 726667

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be (Ben Jonson) — Aidan Chambers

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Belief means willing yourself to give all your attention to living with loving gladness in the world you think really exists. — Aidan Chambers

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Few pleasures, for the true reader, rival the pleasure of browsing unhurriedly among books: old books, new books, library books, other people's books, one's own books - it does not matter whose or where. Simply to be among books, glancing at one here, reading a page from one over there, enjoying them all as objects to be touched, looked at, even smelt, is a deep satisfaction. And often, very often, while browsing haphazardly, looking for nothing in particular, you pick up a volume that suddenly excites you, and you know that this one of all the others you must read. Those are great moments - and the books we come across like that are often the most memorable. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 788835

I am without any doubt whatever a NON-actor. For a start, the gushing pretension of would-be actors puts me off. Ergo ego. I watch them preening in front of the rehearsal mirrors in the drama hall. Just waiting for applause. All they want is to be liked. Plus admired, adored, idolized, flattered, etc. And they're more like groupy than glue. If they're on their own for more than five minutes they get withdrawal symptoms and go walkabout, looking for kindred lost souls to coagulate with. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 804353

Karl was no glamour boy. But even during this first meeting I discovered he had something better. The kind of intelligence that's more attractive than physical beauty. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 817011

Secrets. Funny how, when you're about to be given something precious, something you've wanted for a long time, you suddenly feel nervous over taking it.
Everyone wants more than anything to be allowed into someone else's most secret self. Everyone wants to allow someone into their most secret self. Everyone feels so alone inside that their deepest wish is for someone to know their secret being, because then they are alone no longer. Don't we all long for this? Yet when it's offered it's frightening, because you might not live up to the desires of the one who bestows the gift. And frightening because you know that accepting such a gift means you'll want-perhaps be expected- to offer a similar gift in return. Which means giving your *self* away. And what's more frightening than that? — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 892569

Yes, even in your mouse moods you only play with the idea of not being." She cleared her throat again. "Biology, you see. It's because of biology that we want to live and not to die. And it is because of biology that we come to a time when we want to die and not to live. — Aidan Chambers

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Doing anything when you're bored is very very boring. Anyway, doing nothing is the point of being bored. The pleasure of being bored is mooning about and doing nothing. — Aidan Chambers

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And the price for being a homo-hater should be as high as anyone can pay. — Aidan Chambers

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I don't know, I can't quite get it."
"Don't try. It's just words."
"Just words?"
"Just words! We love them so much, you and me. But in the end, they fail us. Because there are truths beyond words. — Aidan Chambers

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If a boy, if a man, asks you if you're all right and you say yes, he'll always believe you and get on with what he wants to do. It's just the way they're made. — Aidan Chambers

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I sometimes wonder whether most people choose their hobbies because they lust after the gear more than for the benefits of the activities themselves. — Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers Quotes 1383651

How do I think of you? As someone I want to be with. As someone as young as me, but "older," if that makes sense. As someone I like to look at, not just because you're good to look at, but because just looking at you makes me smile and feel happier. As someone who knows her mind and who I envy for that. As someone who is strong in herself without seeming to need anyone else to help her. As someone who makes me thinks and unsettles me in a way that makes me feel more alive. — Aidan Chambers