Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Because everyone can use a little more sass


Tell me, how did you find America?
JL- Turn left at Greenland.

Are you a mod or a rocker?
RS- Um, no, I'm a mocker.

What would you call this hairstyle that you're wearing?
GH- Arthur

Do you often see your father?
PM- No, actually we're just good friends

Love Actually


"...But for now let me say, without hope or agenda, just because it's Christmas and at Christmas time you tell the truth, to me you are perfect and my wasted heart will always love you..."

Van Gogh


”..to me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly the most popular, great painter of all time. The most beloved, his command of colour most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world, no one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again. To my mind, that strange, wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world’s greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.”
 

We're All Stories


"We're all stories in the end, just make it a good one, eh? 'Cause it was, you know. It was the best."

Monday, December 3, 2012

All that is gold does not glitter

"All that is gold does not glitter;
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither;
Deep roots are not touched by the frost."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

In honor of next week's release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 

A Forever Within the Numbered Days

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” 
 -Hazel Grace
Okay so I may or may not be continuing with my obsession over The Fault In Our Stars. The story is told from Hazel's perspective, so the majority of the incredibly inspiring quotes I've found come from her thoughts. As a cancer patient, she has an interesting view of the world around her and how her life affects those around her. This quote, however, was said about/to Augustus Waters (whom I have already quoted). 

We're all Scared



A video in which Hank Green offers an interesting perspective on creating and why it can be terrifying

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

How and Why We Read: Crash Course English Literature #1



This video is the first in an online miniseries done by John Green on English Literature. He talks about why we read and how we read. Personally, I think John Green has a fascinating way of phrasing things and getting his point across. I've noticed with a lot of his videos that he rambles on but it's not nonsense, most of the things he says are significant in some way or another.

Friday, November 23, 2012

“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.”

"I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.” 
 -Augustus Waters, The Fault In Our Stars

Augustus Waters is a character in John Green's book The Fault In Our Stars. He is a 17 year old cancer survivor who befriends and falls in love with Hazel Grace, the main character and fellow cancer patient.  

The Girl Who Waited


"And do one more thing for me: there's a little girl, waiting in a garden; she's going to wait a long while, so she is going to need a lot of hope. Go to her. Tell her a story. Tell her that, if she's patient, the days are coming that she'll never forget. Tell her she'll go to sea and fight pirates, she'll fall in love with a man who'll wait two thousand years to keep her safe. Tell her she'll give hope to the greatest painter who ever lived, and save a whale in outer spaceTell her: This is the story of Amelia Pond - and this, is how it ends."


Amelia Pond is from the TV show Doctor Who on the BBC. 

Monday, November 19, 2012

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

The idea for this blog, I suppose, is centered around having your world shattered by a piece of literature or film. Many of us have experienced this feeling that John Green's character, Hazel Grace, describes so accurately. This phenomenon is not limited to books, however. Often times a character in a film or show will have a line or monologue that is as beautifully written (and spoken) as any brilliant piece of literature. 

As an English Lit major, I have an endless fascination with beautifully crafted words. The main point of this blog is to archive those quotes I come across in books or movies that simply must be remembered and also the character the quote was said by/about. 

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” ― F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Great Gatsby