2024 in Quotes
Hey guys,
Happy New Year! I hope you all had wonderful holidays and started the new year off on a great note.
Many writers closed the year by listing the best books they’ve read in 2024, and I almost followed suit. But then I thought—why not honor these books by sharing the quotes that lingered with me long after I finished them? Here’s my 2024, month by month, in book quotes.
January: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads—at least that’s where I imagine it—there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart, we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.”
February: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
“It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others. I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t know if that’s even interesting. But if I had to explain my understanding of life to someone, I would say that life is not about what you did, but what you remember and how you remember it. Our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”
March: The Stranger by Albert Camus
“All the time, I’d been waiting for this present moment, for that dawn, tomorrow’s or another day’s, which was to justify me. I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate. And so I shall. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”
April: The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
“Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. As long as it is on this shelf, it will always have someone to look after it, and its soul will remain alive.”
May: The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
“I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. I thought of those who had gone before me, whose footsteps had been obliterated in the mud. I thought of their courage and wondered if I could match it. Probably not, but better to stumble forward than to let the darkness entirely claim me.”
June: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
July: Candide by Voltaire
“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”
August: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
September: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“Is it really possible to tell someone else what one feels?”
October: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
“People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.”
November: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
“They say: sufferings are misfortunes,” said Pierre. “But if at once this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God’s sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us.”
December: The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
“Starting at a certain point, the future is only a need to live in the past. To immediately redo the grammatical tenses.”
Out of the 29 books I read in 2024, these lines stood out as some of my favorites. Now I’m looking forward to the books that will shape 2025—whatever insights, challenges, or surprises they might bring. Here’s to another year of reading.
Talk to you soon—
—Lara