Latest Posts by alphareader - Page 4

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire. That day in Moscow, it will all come true, when, for the last time, I take my leave, And hasten to the heights that I have longed for, Leaving my shadow still to be with you

You Will Hear Thunder, Poem by Anna Akhmatova

“Yeah, my mom says that love is like music. One day you just – hear it.” “Whoa. First of all, I never said I loved Patrick. But I think I know what she means. I don’t think she means actual music, Bridge. She means that you know it when you feel it. Like music – you know it when you heart it.” “Okay, so love is also like a hamburger? You know it when you taste it?” Em laughed. “A hamburger is more deliberate. You have to make it, or ask for it. … Music just kind of breaks over you.”

Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead 

He said nothing. Very sarcastically.

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King

At Evensong one night, while Holly played her sax and Mrs. Bethel Utemeyer joined in, I saw him: Holiday, racing past a fluffy white Samoyed. He had lived to a ripe old age on Earth and slept at my father’s feet after my mother left, never wanting to let him out of his sight. He had stood with Buckley while he built his fort and had been the only one permitted on the porch while Lindsey and Samuel kissed. And in the last few years of his life, every Sunday morning, Grandma Lynn had made him a skillet-sized peanut butter pancake, which she would place flat on the floor, never tiring of watching him try to pick it up with his snout. I waited for him to sniff me out, anxious to know if here, on the other side, I would still be the little girl he had slept beside. I did not have to wait long: he was so happy to see me, he knocked me down.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange.

Mosquitoland by David Arnold 

- Saga by Brian K. Vaughan (Writer) Fiona Staples (Artist)

She began to fear that she would always be greedy, all the time. Nothing ever seemed to fill her up. Nothing ever seemed to touch the sides.

Funny Girl by Nick Hornby

Perhaps grief is as much regret for what we have never had as sorrow for what we have lost.

Us by David Nicholls

I believed that books might save him because I knew they had so far, and because I knew the people books had saved. They were college professors and actors and scientists and poets. They got to college and sat on dorm floors drinking coffee, amazed they'd finally found their soul mates. They always dressed a little out of season. Their names were enshrined on the pink cards in the pockets of all the forgotten hardbacks in every library basement in America. If the librarians were lazy enough or nostalgic enough or smart enough, those names would stay there forever.

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of ever being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed.

'Tell the Wolves I'm Home' by Carol Rifka Brunt

The last thing he ever said to me was, "Just always be waiting for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing."

'Peter Pan' by J.M. Barrie 

Once you are real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Once upon a time, each of us was somebody’s kid. Everyone had a father, even if he never provided anything more than his seed. Everyone had a mother, even if she had to leave us on a stranger’s doorstep. No matter how we’re eventually raised, all of our stories begin the exact same way. They all end the same, too.”

Saga Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples

Let me tell you something straight off. This is a love story, but not like any you’ve heard. The boy and the girl are far from innocent. Dear lives are lost. And good doesn’t win. In some places, there is something ultimately good about endings. In Neverland, that is not the case.

'Tiger Lily' by Jodi Lynn Anderson