Top 100 Nina George Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Often it’s not we who shape words, but the words we use that shape us.”

— Nina George

2. “Time. It rubs the rough edges that hurt us smooth. Because I tend to forget that, I’ve kept a pebble from every river I’ve ever traveled.”

— Nina George

3. “Maybe our lives are nothing but stories that are being read by other people.”

— Nina George

4. “Whenever Monsieur Perdu looked at a book, he did not see it purely in terms of a story, retail price and an essential balm for the soul; he saw freedom on wings of paper.”

— Nina George

5. “Do you know that there’s a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? It’s called the hurting time, Jean Perdu. It’s a bog; it’s where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don’t underestimate the transition, Jeanno, between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride.”

— Nina George

6. “We are immortal in the dreams of our loved ones. And our dead live on after their deaths in our dreams. Dreams are the interface between the worlds, between time and space.”

— Nina George

7. “You’re searching for me. I’m no longer in the sealed rooms, of course. Look at me! Out here. Raise your eyes, I’m here! Think of me and call my name! None of this is any less real because I am gone. Death doesn’t matter. It makes no difference to life. We will always remain what we were to one another.”

— Nina George

8. “As long as you can walk upright, you will find a walking stick. As long as you are brave, someone will help you.”

— Nina George

9. “Every woman is a priestess if she loves life and can work magic on herself and those who are sacred to her. It’s time for women to remind themselves of the powers they have inside. The goddess hates to see abilities go to waste, and women waste their abilities far too often.”

— Nina George

10. “A stupid man is every woman’s downfall.”

— Nina George

11. “Reading – an endless journey; a long, indeed never-ending journey that made one more temperate as well as more loving and kind.”

— Nina George

12. “Books can do many things, but not everything. We have to live the important things, not read them.”

— Nina George

13. “We cannot decide to love. We cannot compel anyone to love us. There’s no secret recipe, only love itself. And we are at its mercy – there’s nothing we can do.”

— Nina George

14. “Memories are like wolves. You can’t lock them away and hope they leave you alone.”

— Nina George

15. “Never listen to fear! Fear makes you stupid.”

— Nina George

16. “In Persia we call the meeting of two opposites bar-khord. Bar-khord happens when two strong elements touch and something new forms at their point of intersection. It is not a clash of opposites, more like an intermingling. This in-between state is in constant flux. It doesn’t set opposites against each other; it is the source of a third element, something completely new that draws on the opposites and bears no major similarities to either one or the other.”

— Nina George

17. “Life wasn’t too short: it was too long to waste unduly on non-love, non-laughter and non-decisions. And it began when you first took a risk, failed and realized that you’d survived the failure. With that knowledge, you could risk anything.”

— Nina George

18. “Sanary says that you have to travel south by water to find answers to your dreams. He says too that you find yourself again there, but only if you get lost on the way – completely lost. Through love. Through longing. Through fear. Down south they listen to the sea in order to understand that laughing and crying sound the same, and that the soul sometimes needs to cry to be happy.”

— Nina George

19. “Saudade”: a yearning for one’s childhood, when the days would merge into one another and the passing of time was of no consequence. It is the sense of being loved in a way that will never come again. It is a unique experience of abandon. It is everything that words cannot capture.”

— Nina George

20. “You cannot tell love to come and stay forever. You can only welcome it when it comes, like the summer or the autumn, and when its time is up and it’s gone, then it’s gone. The.”

— Nina George

21. “It’s amazing how unimpressed people are by being loved when it doesn’t fit in with their plans. Love irks them so much that they change the locks or leave without warning.”

— Nina George

22. “The beach was empty, no footprints in the sand, and yet they were all there: the dead, the night and the sea. The sea offered her a song of bravery and love. It came from a long way away, as if someone somewhere in the world had sung it many years ago, for those on the shore who didn’t dare to take the plunge.”

— Nina George

23. “Nothing is colder than a heart that once blazed.”

— Nina George

24. “Forget about the height of the staircase... concentrate instead on the first step, taking it step by step from there. That’s how you confront a challenge that seems overwhelming at first... Shrink the world, be precise; pay no heed to the long night before you but only to the next moment. You must follow the path to the very end to get an overview of the whole journey.”

— Nina George

25. “A nation that has less than a thousand years of culture to look back on, no myths, no superstition, no collective memories, values or sense of shame; nothing but pseudo-Christian warrior morals, deviant wheat, an amoral arms lobby, and rampant sexist racism” – those were the words of a New York Times article in which he had laid into the United States before leaving the country.”

— Nina George

26. “Tango is a truth drug. It lays bare your problems and your complexes, but also the strengths you hide from others so as not to vex them. It shows what a couple can be for each other, how they can listen to each other. People who only want to listen to themselves will hate tango.”

— Nina George

27. “And yes, being lovesick is like being in mourning. Because you die, because your future dies and you with it... There is a hurting time. It lasts for so long. But it gets better. I know that now.”

— Nina George

28. “Time. It rubs the rough edges that hurt us smooth.”

— Nina George

29. “Every second can mark a new beginning. Open your eyes and see: the world is out there and it wants you.”

— Nina George

30. “Hesse’s Stage came to Perdu’s mind. Most people were familiar with the first line, of course: “In all beginnings dwells a magic force... ” but very few people know the ending: “For guarding us and helping us to live.” And hardly anyone realized that Hesse wasn’t talking about new beginnings. He meant a readiness to bid farewell. Farewell to old habits, Farwell to illusions. Farewell to a long-expired life, in which one was nothing but a husk, rustled by the occasional sigh.”

— Nina George

31. “The reality of love is better than its reputation.”

— Nina George

32. “When the stars imploded billions of years ago, iron and silver, gold and carbon came raining down. And the iron from that stardust is in us today-in our mitochondria. Mothers pass on the stars and their iron to their children. Who knows, Jean, you and I might be made of the dust from one and the same star, and maybe we recognized each other by its light. We were searching for each other. We are star seekers.”

— Nina George

33. “It takes only one word to hurt a woman, a matter of seconds, one stupid, impatient blow of the crop. But winning back her trust takes years. And sometimes there isn’t the time.”

— Nina George

34. “I am the daughter of a tall, strong tree. My timber forms a ship, but it is anchorless, flagless. I set sail for the shade and the light; I drink the wind and forget all ports. To hell with freedom, gifted or seized; if in doubt, always endure alone.”

— Nina George

35. “Oh no, she was never elitist. She said that far too many women are the accomplices of cruel, indifferent men. They lie for these men. They lie to their own children. Because their fathers treated them exactly the same way. These women always retain some hope that love is hiding behind the cruelty, so that the anguish doesn’t drive them mad. Truth is, though, Max, there’s no love there.”

— Nina George

36. “I need to cry some more. I’ll drown if I don’t... Sometimes you’re swimming in unwept tears and you’ll go under if you store them up inside.”

— Nina George

37. “That was the only tragic thing about books: they changed people. All except the truly evil, who did not become better fathers, nicer husbands more loving friends. They remained tyrants, continued to torment their employees, children and dogs, were spiteful in petty matters and cowardly in important ones, and rejoiced in their victims’ shame.”

— Nina George

38. “Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone... It’s just that you’re chipped away at from within, and no one sees how many splinters and layers have been taken off you. You become ever thinner and more brittle inside, until eve the slightest emotion bowls you over. One hug, and you think you’re going to shatter and be lost.”

— Nina George

39. “That’s the magic of literature. We read a story, and something happens. We don’t know what or why, nor which sentence it was responsible, but the world has changed and will never be the same again. Sometimes it takes us several years to realize that a book tore a hole in reality through which we could escape from the pettiness and despondency of our surroundings.”

— Nina George

40. “The radiance of this beautiful scene shed a cruel light on every past horror, every insult tolerated, every unspoken retort, every gesture of rejection. Marianne was grieving, and her boundless grief made her regret every moment of cowardice in her life.”

— Nina George

41. “Loving is different from being loved. Giving and seeing how a person flourishes and feeds off your love: the amount of power you possess, and the fact that that power makes someone the best they can be.”

— Nina George

42. “But it’s well known that reading makes people impudent, and tomorrow’s world is going to need some people who aren’t shy to speak their minds, don’t you think?”

— Nina George

43. “At lunchtime and in the evening he read aloud to Cuneo while the latter prepared the meals. Cuneo would often request stories by women authors. “Women tell you more about the world. Men only tell you about themselves.”

— Nina George

44. “And yet, life as an autonomous woman is not a song. It’s a scream, a war; it’s a daily struggle against the easy option of obeying.”

— Nina George

45. “Every woman is a priestess if she loves life and can work magic on herself and those who are sacred to her. It’s time for women to remind themselves of the powers they have inside.”

— Nina George

46. “It’s amazing how close you are to your essential self as a kid, he thought, and how far from it you drift the more you strive to be loved.”

— Nina George

47. “She was the world breathing.”

— Nina George

48. “Books aren’t eggs, you know. Simply because a book has aged a bit doesn’t mean it’s gone bad.” There was now an edge to Monsieur Perdu’s voice too. “What is wrong with old? Age isn’t a disease. We all grow old, even books. But are you, is anyone, worth less, or less important, because they’ve been around for longer?”

— Nina George

49. “We turn peculiar when we don’t have anyone left to love.”

— Nina George

50. “Yet sometimes it still feels as if I’m sewed up in my own skin, as if I’m living in an invisible box that keeps me in and everyone else out. In such moments even my own voice strikes me as superfluous.”

— Nina George