5 Author Quotes On Hope And The Power Of Literature

What would our world be without hope? The harsh truth? Nothing. Regardless of religious beliefs or lack there of, human beings can all agree that hope is essential to the nourishing of the human spirit. And these author’s provide great quotations that further prove how prominent hope is.

 

1. Courtney Maum, author of Touch

“When I really need a dose of hope (which for me, translates into a reminder that the world is full of beauty), I turn to poetry, and to two books in particular. Tremble by C.D. Wright, which celebrates the fury, the sensuality, and the wit of being female, and It is Daylight by Arda Collins, a collection powered by a desperate, gritty, and completely singular humor that makes me want to try and create something beautiful, and odd, too.”

Source: Giphy

Source: Giphy

2. Arianna Huffington, author of The Sleep Revolution

“I like to keep Meditations by Marcus Aurelius on my bedside table. You can open it up to any page and be inspired in one or two sentences. The book, and the stoic principles that it’s based on, give you hope by making you realize that, while you can’t control external events and what happens to you, you can control your reaction. It helps you remember that true happiness and fulfillment can come only from inside, as illustrated by one of my favorite quotes from the book:

‘People look for retreats for themselves, in the country, by the coast, or in the hills. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind. . . . So constantly give yourself this retreat, and renew yourself.’”

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Source: Giphy

3. Caite Dolan-Leach, author of Dead Letters

“For me, some of the darkest and most unhappy books are what give me a version of hope. Dystopic books, like Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy, for example, offer us potent imaginings of what happens when the world is beyond hope, and fictionalizing that potential tragedy offers us glimpses of how we might avoid it. The idea that we might, through literature, be capable of imagining the disastrous outcome of our present allows me to hope that we pay attention to what’s happening to our world and society today, and change it–we are all writing the future, after all, with the choices we make now.”

Source: Giphy

Source: Giphy

4. Ruth Behar, author of Lucky Broken Girl

“Lately I turn to a book I didn’t know about when I was young, but am so glad to have read now that I’m older and have written a novel for young readers. That book is The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes. In the story Wanda Petronski, a poor Polish-American girl, is teased relentlessly by the other kids because she wears the same faded blue dress to school every day. Wanda asserts that she owns one hundred dresses, which no one believes until they learn that she is a talented artist who has made beautiful drawings of a hundred dresses. But by then Wanda has moved away.

The story is told from the point of view of a classmate, Maddie, who feels guilty and wishes she’d had the courage and compassion to stand up for Wanda. Although her awakening comes too late to save Wanda from her suffering, the heartbreak Maddie feels at not having acted is a lesson in hope. Let us be kind to every Wanda in our midst and act with empathy towards others. I have started carrying this book in my suitcase when I travel and it makes me feel I’m bringing along a bit of hope wherever I go.”

hope quotes

Source: Giphy

5. Susannah Meadows, author of The Other Side of Impossible

“I used to think that hope was rooted in the known possibility, however small. If you’re diagnosed with an illness that 99 out of 100 people won’t survive, you could still have hope because of the example of one. But then I learned about people who faced diseases and conditions that it was unheard of to come back from and they still thought recovery was doable. One woman with MS was using a wheelchair. Another woman’s son had severe food allergies. One little girl had intractable epilepsy and autistic traits. Under those circumstances, the reasonable thing would have been not to have hope. And yet somehow they did. There was no example of one, but rather than give up, they became it.”

hope quotes

Source: Giphy

What gives you hope?

YouTube Channel: Life Between Words

 

Featured image via SheLoves Magazine

h/t Signature Reads