Aidan Chambers Quotations

I thought how lovely and how strange a river is...

Self pity is a disease which does not kill but corrodes.

And trust dies from ifs and buts

I cannot live without reading.

The plain unwelcome fact is that sometimes life stymies you.

The most memorable people in life will be the friends who loved you when you weren’t very lovable.

The books, the authors who matter the most are those who speak to me and speak for me all those things about life I most need to hear as the confession of myself

I huff and puff and struggle with every sentence, paragraph and page - sometimes every word as well.

Readers are made by readers - it is so obvious it is almost banal to say it.

You become a reader by reading the literature, not by reading the handbooks about it.

You get to be wiser by storying the world and seeing it through other forms of consciousness than your own.

And the price for being a homo-hater should be as high as anyone can pay.

Rooms are a fixed size, which can't be altered without pulling down walls and building new ones. They should be unchanging in shape and proportions. But sometimes they do change depending on who's in them.

You have to know your own truth and stick to it. And never despair. Never give up. There's always hope.

Doing anything when you're bored is very very boring. Anyway, doing nothing is the point of being bored. The pleasure of being bored ismooning about and doing nothing.

Belief means willing yourself to give all your attention to living with loving gladness in the world you think really exists.

She was--I keep using the past tense; I ought to say she is--one of those people who, at first sight, look plain, are quiet, unassertive, unmemorable even. But who, when they start to talk and you get to know them, become more and more attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact they are beautiful. Not conventionally beautiful, not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through.

There are times when you don't know yourself. There are times when you don't want to know yourself. There are times when you want to be what you have never allowed yourself to be before.

When you are in your teenage years you are consciously experiencing everything for the first time, so adolescent stories are all beginnings. There are never any endings.

Is it better to go with the flow or let the flow go?

Love, being in love, isn’t a constant thing. It doesn’t always flow at the same strength. It’s not always like a river in flood. It’s more like the sea. It has tides, it ebbs and flows. The thing is, when love is real, whether it’s ebbing or flowing, it’s always there, it never goes away. And that’s the only proof you can have that it is real, and not just a crush or an infatuation or a passing fancy

I don't actually think “true love” is such a good term because love can only be true. If it isn't true it can't be love.

Yet, isn't it strange, isn't it weird, how we can KNOW that someone is not behaving in the way we imagine, and at the same time we can be totally convinced that he is! How clever the human mind is, that it can accept two contradictory things as 'facts.' Yes, I know that in this case one 'fact' was untrue. But the human mind can KNOW something is untrue and still accept it as a 'fact,' and act on it as if it were true.

He thought: How difficult it is to explain yourself to yourself. Sometimes there only is, and no knowing.

All the time I think I can never love you more than I already do. And then you do something or say something, and I love you more than ever. Like just now. Like now. How is it possible? Can you love someone more and more and at the same time, all the time, love them as much as it's possible to love someone?

We resent being faced with facts we'd prefer to ignore as much as being wrongly accused of doing something we haven't.

And when someone else speaks your name you feel pleased. You feel wanted. You feel there. Alive. Even if they're saying your name with dislike, at least you know you're you, that you exist.

The demons of the Devil don't use your weak weaknesses against you, they use your strong ones. If you're rational and logical, they argue their case rationally and logically. If you're loyal and faithful, they turn those against you. If you're passionate and emotional, they make you passionate and emotional about your worse fears. Your weak weaknesses are no use to them.... They find the strongest weaknesses you didn't know were yours and use those against you.

a joy that hurts with sadness a sadness that is pleasurable a pleasure full of terror a terror that excites an excitement that calms a calmness that frightens.

Fame, money and the size of the market are not very important to me. What is, is writing a book that is worth doing and then publishing it. I don't write books for entertainment, for people to pass the time then throw away.

If a boy, if a man, asks you if you're all right and you say yes, he'll always believe you and get on with what he wants to do. It's just the way they're made.

I will not compromise on language or content. At 15, people can handle the same language as me, they're just as complicated as me and are very interested in thinking about important questions for the first time.

History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.

How do I think of you? As someone I want to be with. As someone as young as me, but "older," if that makes sense. As someone I like to look at, not just because you're good to look at, but because just looking at you makes me smile and feel happier. As someone who knows her mind and who I envy for that. As someone who is strong in herself without seeming to need anyone else to help her. As someone who makes me thinks and unsettles me in a way that makes me feel more alive.

Life is not like a novel, but a novel can be like life. The best ones always are.

However much you love somebody, you should always keep a part of yourself to yourself. Never give it all. You can never be yourself otherwise.

Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don't do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get a chance again.