Best Lit Quotes & Sayings

For there was now a wall of trees blocking any progress-
-and Inigo would not stop bleeding-
-and Westley would not start breathing-
-and Buttercup would not stop staring at him, her face lit with the hope that of all the creatures left stomping the earth, he, Fezzik, was the only one that could save her beloved and thereby stop her heart from shredding.
Fezzik at this heroic moment knew what he wanted most to do: suck his thumb forever. But since that was out of the question, he did the next best thing. He made a poem.
Fezzik's — William Goldman

Every quirky girl doesn't have to be the best-friend character. It's a very limiting and self-fulfilling prophecy. People only write things that will get green-lit, so they write to those stereotypes. — Felicia Day

We have the same symptoms as tuberculosis, especially in the eyes of the Romantic Poets. Pale, tired, coughing up blood."
"That's romantic?"
I had to smile. "Romantic with a capital 'R.' You know, like Byron and Coleridge."
He gave a mock shudder. "Please, stop. I barely passed English Lit."
I snorted. "I didn't have that option. One of my aunts took Byron as a lover."
"Get out."
"Seriously. It makes Lucy insanely jealous."
"That girl is . . ."
"My best friend," I filled in sternly.
"I was only going to say she's unique. — Alyxandra Harvey

It never was anything very splendid at the best," said he. He lifted the lamp from the table with a sort of abstraction, not remarking even my offer to take it from him, and led the way. He was on the verge of seventy, and looked his age; but it was a vigorous age, with no symptom of giving way. The circle of light from the lamp lit up his white hair and keen blue eyes and clear complexion; his forehead was like old ivory, his cheek warmly colored; an old man, yet a man in full strength. He was taller than I was, and still almost as strong. As he stood for a moment with the lamp in his hand, he looked like a tower in his great height and bulk. I reflected as I looked at him that I knew him intimately, more intimately than any other creature in the world, - I was familiar with every detail of his outward life; could it be that in reality I did not know him at all? * — Mrs. Oliphant

They paused at a table bearing a collection of magic lanterns, small embossed tin lamps with condensing lenses at the front. There was a slot for a hand-painted glass slide just behind the lens. When the lamp was lit, an image would be projected on a wall. Rohan insisted on buying one for Amelia, along with a packet of slides.
"But it's a child's toy," she protested, holding the lantern by its wire handle. "What am I to do with it?"
"Indulge in pointless entertainment. Play. You should try it sometime."
"Playing is for children, not adults."
"Oh, Miss Hathaway," he murmured, leading her away from the table. "The best kind of playing is for adults. — Lisa Kleypas

When I had no books and had to learn everything I needed off by heart, and when I had to hide what books I had, I promised myself a library filled with the best editions I could afford. I have it now. Books bought out of books. A red room with deep chairs and a fireplace lit. Books of every kind, but no paperbacks, and certain shelves where First Editions are. This is not my study, where there are plenty of paperbacks, it is a contemplative island cut off from busyness, set outside of time. — Jeanette Winterson

Recalling those gone times, old memories lit by the fire of the new, I did not this time wonder how long it would last; I was too smart for that now. Take what you get, and don't think. Of course it could never be that easy, but there were moments, like now, that I could successfully pretend that it was, and I had no inclination to try to peer past those moments. I'm not one who wants to know the future: at the best it spoils the present, with longing or dismay, and at the worst, well. Who really wants to find out how tight the sling is, for your own very personal ass, who wants to know how deep the shit will really be. Not you. Not me either. Because it's rarely bliss saved up, is it, when you finally get there. I'll take my now, waking with a lover's scent on me, around me, take my hopes before they're maybe tragedy; a good morning is a good morning, even if it leads to apocalypse at night. — Kathe Koja

I could have sworn I just heard him thinking about the proposal he had planned. Red roses and champagne waiting at the restaurant, but maybe I imagined it."
I frowned in turn. "You could read his thoughts?"
"It is probably just my imagination running away with me. I'm so freaked out that I plucked the idea from my own head. I'm not a mind reader."
"Well, it is easy enough to test. Try to concentrate on me and tell me what I'm thinking."
Finally, Nessa's eyes lit up and met mine. Amused, she quirked a smile at me. "Really, Cora, that's lame. I love fluffy bunnies, is not what I expected. — Andrea Heltsley

I'll be as loving as you will be, as stubborn as I know you are, as passionate as I'm thankful you are and as supportive and understanding as I've known you to be. You are my best friend and I love you — Danielle-Claude Ngontang Mba

If you've ever read one of those articles that asks notable people to list their favorite books, you may have been impressed or daunted to see them pick Proust or Thomas Mann or James Joyce. You might even feel sheepish about the fact that you reread Pride and Prejudice or The Lord of the Rings, or The Catcher in the Rye or Gone With the Wind every couple of years with some much pleasure. Perhaps, like me, you're even a little suspicious of their claims, because we all know that the books we've loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly - or the ones we'd most like other people to think we read over and over again. — Laura Miller

Rome and New York were impressive, but they knew they were. They had the beauty of a vain woman who had squeezed herself into her favourite dress after hours of careful self worship. There was a raw, feral beauty about this landscape that was totally unselfconscious but no less real...There was no pomp or vainty here; this was an innocent, natural beauty, the best kind, like a woman first thing in the morning, lit up by the sun streaming through a window, who doesn't quite believe it when you tell her how beautiful she is. — Leonardo Donofrio

In New York, I would walk down shadowy sidewalks dreaming of the openness of central Ohio, yearning for roads flanked by fields, for their freedom and isolation. These roads cradled me. I realized this now. I'd been trying to hate Ohio, because it was so hard to be at home. But the land had actually always been there for me all along. As a child, the moon had lit my room on sad nights. I'd wandered cornfields and puttered around at Lehman's Pond. Those were some of my best childhood memories. — Julie Barton

Alex:
OK, that sounds like a challenge! Well firstly, I would have brought you to a hotel along the coast so that your suite would have the best sea view in the hotel. You could fall asleep listening to the waves crashing against the rocks, I would sprinkle the bed with red rose petals and have candles lit all around the room, I would have your favorite CD playing quietly in the background.
But I wouldn't propose to you there. I would bring you to where there was a huge crowd of people so they could all gasp when I got down on one knee and proposed. Or something like that. Note I have italicized all important buzz words.
Rosie:
Oh.
Alex:
Oh? That's all you can say? One word for the most important night of our lives? — Cecelia Ahern

One day a friend came by the job site and asked them separately what they were doing. The first said, "Aw, we're just laying brick. We've been doing this for thirty years. It's so boring. One brick on top of the other." Then the friend asked the second bricklayer. He just lit up. "Why, we're building a magnificent skyscraper," he said. "This structure is going to stand tall for generations to come. I'm just so excited that I could be a part of it." Each bricklayer's happiness or lack of it was based on their perspective. You can be laying a brick or you can be building a beautiful skyscraper. The choice is up to you. You can go to work each day and just punch in on the clock and dread being there and do as little as possible. Or you can show up with enthusiasm and give it your best, knowing that you're making the world a better place. — Joel Osteen

Made up of corallitic accretions and painful increments, lit on rare occasions by bolts of revelation, and then stuffed behind the wainscotting to grope in the mouse-turd dust, art is the equivalent of athlete's foot, at best an exquisite itch, at worst an excuse to stop walking. On the emotional side, it is either masturbation with a hockey glove or a night beneath the sliding moon that shames Eros. — Harold Town

Any extreme political creed brought only darkness in the long run; it lit up nothing. The best politics were those of caution, tolerance and moderation, Angus maintained, but such politics were, alas, also very dull, and certainly moved nobody to poetry. — Alexander McCall Smith

I'd later read up on it, because understanding something meant being able to handle it, and my problems back then had been ones I could understand. The effect was a result of the mind's idleness. We only really saw a little bit of what we looked at, and our brain worked constantly to fill in the gaps and unimportant spaces with its best guesses. In a dimly lit room, with the mind focused on the steady, hypnotic repetition, the brain would fill in spaces with the only reference points available to it, taking from features in its field of view to patch together the face. Fear, imagination and the recently-told scary story of having one's entrails ripped out through their mouth did the rest.

The mind was an amazing thing, but it had limits and weaknesses. I'd been taking in too much even before I added the clairvoyant. — Wildbow

But it's a curse, a condemnation, like an act of provocation, to have been aroused from not being, to have been conjured up from a clot of dirt and hay and lit on fire and sent stumbling among the rocks and bones of this ruthless earth to weep and worry and wreak havoc and ponder little more than the impending return to oblivion, to invent hopes that are as elaborate as they are fraudulent and poorly constructed, and that burn off the moment they are dedicated, if not before, and are at best only true as we invent them for ourselves or tell them to others, around a fire, in a hovel, while we all freeze or starve or plot or contemplate treachery or betrayal or murder or despair of love, or make daughters and elaborately rejoice in them so that when they are cut down even more despair can be wrung from our hearts, which prove only to have been made for the purpose of being broken. And worse still, because broken hearts continue beating. — Paul Harding

When we were kids, Fitz was unbeatable in Scrabble. It would drive Eric crazy, because he wasn't used to be bested by Fitz in much of anything. But Fitz had an uncanny memory, and once he saw a word, he wouldn't forget it. [ ... ] But Eric wasn't used to be second-best, so he commissioned me into teaching him the dictionary. [ ... ] Three weeks after we'd taken on the English language, it rained on a Saturday. "Hey," Fitz suggested, like usual. "Bet I can whip you in Scrabble."
Eric looked at me. "Huh," he said, "What makes you think that?"
"Um ... the five hundred and seventy thousand other times I've kicked your ass?"
Fitz knew. The moment Eric laid down the letters J-A-R-L and then casually mentioned that it was a term for a Scandinavian noble, Fitz's eyes lit up. — Jodi Picoult

I plastered on my best poker face, attempting to appear cool and casual even thought I had never been so eager to deliver two Chicken Parmagianas in my life.
"Just be careful, hon," Rosanna said.
"Oh, are the plates hot?" I flinched back just before my hands made contact.
Rosanna laughed. "No, but hot boys can burn just as easily. — C.J. Duggan

With every beat of my heart, I believe she thought keeping her secret was in everyone's best interest. She thought the secret would be buried with her, never to be revealed. She thought wrong. — Misa Rush

Okay," she said as he lit the candle and hummed the birthday song. "You know,this is all very Jake Ryan of you."
"Who's Jake Ryan?"
"The hottie from Sixteen Candles - the best teenage movie ever made. The last scene looks just like this," she said, looking around the room.
"All right, well, don't you go wishing for him when you blow out the candle."
"I love you,Jace. You're the only thing I want. — Phoebe Lane

my father...there was never any mistaking his love for me. When I walked into the room, his eyes lit up and he wrapped me in his arms as if it was Christmas morning and I was the best gift imaginable. — Eric Ripert

There are places in the world where real life is still happening, far away from here, in a pre-Hitler Europe, where hundreds of lights are lit every evening, ladies and gentlemen gather to drink coffee with cream in oak-panelled rooms, or sit comfortably in splendid coffee-houses under gilt chandeliers, stroll arm in arm to the opera or the ballet, observe from close-up the lives of great artists, passionate love affairs, broken hearts, the painter's girlfriend falling in love with his best friend the composer, and going out at midnight bareheaded in the rain to stand alone on the ancient bridge whose reflection trembles in the river. * — Amos Oz

The teachers of my life saved my life and sent me out prepared for whatever life I was meant to lead. Like everyone else, I had some bad ones and mediocre ones, but I never had one that I thought was holding me back because of idleness or thoughtlessness. They spent their lives with the likes of me and I felt safe during the time they spent with me. The best of them made me want to be just like them. I wanted young kids to look at me the way I looked at the teachers who loved me. Loving them was not difficult for a boy like me. They lit a path for me, and one that I followed with joy. — Pat Conroy

Fire and hope are connected, just so you know.
The way the Greek told it, Zeus put Prometheus and Epimetheus in charge of creating life on earth. Epimetheus made the animals, giving out bonuses like swiftness and strenght and fur and wings.
By the time Prometheus made man, all the best qualities had been given out. He settled for making them walk upright, and he gave them fire.
Zeus, pissed off, took it away. But prometheus saw his pride and joy shivering and unable to cook. He lit a torch from the sun and brought it to man again.
To punish Prometheus, Zeus had him chained to a rock, where an eagle fed on his liver. To punish man, Zeus created the first woman-Pandora-and gave her a gift, a box she was forbidden to open.
Pandora's curiosity got the best of her, and one day she opened that box. Out came plagues and misery and mischief. She managed to shut the lid tight before hope escaped.
It's the only weapon we have left to fight the others. — Jodi Picoult

Although to be driven back upon oneself is an uneasy affair at best, rather like trying to cross a border with borrowed credentials, it seems to me now the one condition necessary to the beginning of self-respect. Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. — Joan Didion

The graveyard was at the top of the hill. It looked over all of the town. The town was hills - hills that issued down in trickles and then creeks and then rivers of cobblestone into the town, to flood the town with rough and beautiful stone that had been polished into smooth flatness over the centuries. It was a pointed irony that the very best view of the town could be had from the cemetery hill, where high, thick walls surrounded a collection of tombstones like wedding cakes, frosted with white angels and iced with ribbons and scrolls, one against another, toppling, shining cold. It was like a cake confectioner's yard. Some tombs were big as beds. From here, on freezing evenings, you could look down at the candle-lit valley, hear dogs bark, sharp as tuning forks banged on a flat stone, see all the funeral processions coming up the hill in the dark, coffins balanced on shoulders.
("The Candy Skull") — Ray Bradbury

Un homme qui lit, ou qui pense, ou qui calcule, appartient a' l'espe' ce et non au sexe; dans ses meilleurs moments, il e chappe me me a' l'humain. A person who reads or thinks or calculates, belongs to a kind and not to a gender; in his or her best moments, he or she escapes being human. — Stephanie Crayencour

Even though I loved to write, I never liked English lit. class very much. I think it ruins books when you dissect them too much. I liked my art classes best. — Meg Cabot

Above the street, like a hanged man, swings the spot-lit sign of the neighborhood's best restaurant, closed a long time ago. — Roberto Bolano

Back in time it seemed that having a sister were a tragedy.
Instead it is one of the best presents my parents could have ever given me. — Sara Anzellotti

That is a beautiful tuxedo," Phury announced as he and Z pushed the door wide. "I have one just like it ."
"Fritz has the candles lit," Rehv said from behind the twins. "Hey, nice tux. I haveone just like it."
"Me, too," Phury agreed. "The fit is fantastic, isn't it."
"The shoulders, right? Tom Ford is the best - — J.R. Ward

Honesty is the best policy. But insanity is a hell of a lot more effective in court. So your set, McMullen — Lois Greiman

Bob says that when you're alone, and you light a cigarette, and the cigarette is only half way lit that means someone is thinking about you.
He also says that when you find a penny, it's only "lucky" if it's heads-up.
He says the best thing to do is find a lucky penny when you're with someone and give the other person goodluck ". — Stephen Chbosky

Are you going to do it?" he asked. "Maybe," I said.
Don't 'maybe' me, baby. It's written all over you. I'd almost be willing to go along, you know. Of all my relations, I like sex the best and Eric the least."
I lit a cigarette, while I considered. — Roger Zelazny