This Is Berk Quotes & Sayings

Most people give little enough real thought to their own mortality. Oh yes, they gabble on about heaven and the bosom of Abraham, but really, they are weary of life almost from the time they're born, and are only waiting for it all to end. They live their days quietly, obscurely, and underneath their daily toils, they long for oblivion. — Ari Berk

Amos surely left it behind for a reason, and more and more Mrs. Bowe felt she was following a path trod out for her by another. For the time being, she was willing to play the part allotted to her. But she would keep an eye on the boy in her way. — Ari Berk

Silas knew words could have power behind them. Usually it was just a sort of bad luck. He also knew, very early on, that you could never tell when that bad luck would jump up to claim its due, so it was best to be careful. Quiet was safer. He wished his parents had been quieter when they were together. Who knew what might happen when you said something awful to someone else? It was hard to take some words back. Some words stuck and you couldn't shake them off. Silence was better than those kinds of words. Silas had learned that lesson the hard way. — Ari Berk

Here, in this house, her recollections glowed like embers on the hearth, and each night, in their warmth, she'd take a memory or two down from the shelf and dance with them for a while. — Ari Berk

To love you is her nature. But hers is a love from which no good may come. And your desire for her will lead only to cold, dark places. — Ari Berk

When you by nature subscribe to the view that everyone except yourself is a berk or a wanker, it is hard to bond with anybody in any rational common cause. — Lynne Truss

At first Silas liked the subjects simply because of their strangeness, but slowly he began to believe in the possibilities of what he was reading, in a world filled with secrets and magic. When he was younger, he'd suspected his father believed in many of these things too, so that made it easy for them to talk. As he grew older, Silas began to see the glimmers of hieroglyphic logic behind the occult. There was a reason for these oddities to exist, perhaps as strange connections between the mind and the things people feared or desired. Magic was a conversation. Ghosts were real, and they were watching because something had happened that necessitated their presence. — Ari Berk

What is time
a November leaf
a child's vacillating mouth
a rose
a left-over, half-drunk glass of water. — Ilhan Berk

That old berk," muttered Aberforth, taking another swig of mead. "Thought the sun shone out of my brother's every orifice, he did. — J.K. Rowling

Student-Athletes, Remember Play the Game, don't let the Game Play You. — Jeffrey A. Berk

Pustular berk with the charisma of a plimsole — Julian Barnes

People always look at the stuff in their head before they see what's in front of their faces. That's what makes them so easy to mess with. — Adam Berk

When we change the shape of the Land, we alter the contents and contexts of our collective, familial, and personal memories. Yet, stories can preserve both mythic and familiar elements of geography even when the physical features are forgotten, buried, or obliterated. And more than this: the stories can bring these elements back. If the Land can be preserved long enough for its stories to be told, and retold, perhaps we all - as custodians of both place and memory - stand a chance at real preservation. — Ari Berk

All storytelling is a form of travel. All of the things you know you should do when traveling this world apple in Elfland as well. The Charms will open the doors to strange and wondrous lands, so some travel tips and runic etiquette may be in order: Be polite. Don't take anything without asking. Laugh at their jokes. Remember, humor is sacred: so is hospitality. Beware of the dark woods at night. Do not trust the wolf in winter. Take notes. Sing for your supper. Pack extra sandwiches. Bring fine gifts. Always tell a story when asked. Listen as if your life depended on it. Start early. Walk the land. Keep your eyes open. Travel wisely and well. Come back safe and sound. — Ari Berk

Stories wander around, go from one land to another, sometimes parts change. — Ari Berk

The hours must be endured and those who cannot do so in life will most surely do so in death. You say you cannot face them? Life's joys and pains both? You shall find them waiting for you, a world of ignored moments there to be explored. Then shall you know how long an hour can be, shall feel the awful depth and restlessness of even a single day, and all the days you fled from life while you were alive. — Ari Berk

For didn't everyone have secret parts and shadows? — Ari Berk

He passed his hands over some of the fine embossed bindings as he thought, I am a book also, words and thoughts and stories held together by flesh. We open and close ourselves to the world. We are read by others or put away by them. We wait to be seen, sitting quietly on shelves for someone to bother having a look inside us. — Ari Berk

Love is an art, Berk. Just like painting or music. Some painters draw mere lines, scratches on the canvas and call them art; some paint stars studded skies like van Gogh; or Chopin's music conquers the hearts of millions while the execrable disco music blaring out of the open windows of a car have also their audience. Some describe love in high-flown flowery language and you identify yourself with the hero and the heroine and feel yourself in the seventh heaven while some give such a lamentable picture of it that you almost curse it! — T. Afsin Ilgar

Love is fragile and rare and cannot live long in open air. — Ari Berk

To get ahead, sometimes you had to retrace your steps. — Ari Berk

Sense is the song you sing out into the world, and the song the world sings back to you. — Ari Berk

Worry can pull a person's face into a mask of anxious lines, and he could tell she'd had some of that, but even worried folks could laugh. — Ari Berk

She thought he cared too much. Sometimes Dolores could see that her son felt what other people were feeling. He was sympathetic, she knew that. But Silas managed to make his feelings about others into another kind of absence. You'd laugh, Silas would laugh. You'd cry, he'd start crying. It was like he was tuning in to a radio station. It took a moment for the distant signal to lock in, but once it did, he'd be right in sync with you. Only when he got angry, or hurt, did the signal fail and he'd become very present indeed, and very annoyed to have his calm broken. Then it was nothing but static. — Ari Berk

In life, a person will come and go from many homes. We may leave a house, a town, a room, but that does not mean those places leave us. Once entered, we never entirely depart the homes we make for ourselves in the world. They follow us, like shadows, until we come upon them again, waiting for us in the mist. — Ari Berk

Japanese tea ceremony, — Sheryl Berk

Each of them had been looking for a way out of their own black midnights, and each of them still had a long way to go until they found some kind of dawn. — Ari Berk

Or maybe a ghost was only a thing that endures, like the furnishings of this room, like the chairs or table; a little worse for wear, but still here because someone cherished it, or because it was made of such hardy stuff that time couldn't wear it down fast enough. — Ari Berk

Dolores liked that story. Men were wolves and practical women took the knife to them, and those wolves, those sharp-toothed men, they didn't come back after that. — Ari Berk

And somewhere, buried away deep inside him, a hidden chamber of his heart opened. — Ari Berk

And this was the surprising thing about life on Berk. It was a bit like the sea itself. One minute it was all storms, and shipwrecks, and desperate escapes from deadly dragons, the next it was as calm, and peacefully restful, as if these things had never happened. — Cressida Cowell

This book is not for parents who want to raise a perfect child. You can probably make that kind of kid, but I don't think you should. I've met more than my share of young prodigies - kids who were pushed to skip grades, memorize Latin names for every insect, and greet all adults with firm handshakes. They're weird, and not in a good way, like a corgi wearing a tuxedo: sure it's cute, but does it truly know joy? — Brett Berk

Uncle seemed to take pleasure from knowing things other people didn't. Silas did not like thinking this about the man who'd given them a place to live, but there was a sort of smirk hidden inside his uncle's words that made Silas feel like he was being laughed at. He knew that tone. He'd heard it often enough from kids at school, from the ones who'd look at you like you weren't worth talking to, from the ones who looked at your unfashionable clothes, or the shape of your face, and told everyone else that you were a freak. Silas was scared of those kids, because usually, those were the ones who didn't think that normal rules applied to them, the ones who thought they could get away with anything. — Ari Berk

For when we read, don't we summon the past into the present? Hold out our hand and invite an author to sit with us for a time? — Ari Berk