Christmas Eve Quotes

1. "They shared an image of the American Christmas--riches, reconciliations, tears, snow, success, sentiment, furs and firs, the shop windows shining like Heaven and everything good for sale."
Author: Alice Thomas Ellis

2. "We debate sometimes what is to be the future of this nation when we think that in a few years public affairs may be in the hands of the fin-de-siecle gilded youths we see about us during the Christmas holidays. Such foppery, such luxury, such insolence,was surely never practiced by the scented, overbearing patricians of the Palatine, even in Rome's most decadent epoch. In all the wild orgy of wastefulness and luxury with which the nineteenth century reaches its close, the gilded youth has been surely the worst symptom."
Author: Booth Tarkington

3. "In those days, Christmas still retained a certain aura of magic and mystery. The powdery light of winter, the hopeful expressions of people who lived among shadows and silence, lent that setting a slight air of promise in which at least children and those who had learned the art of forgetting could still believe."
Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafón

4. "It brings back a long-forgotten memory of Christmas, the year I turned six. I was supposed to be in bed, but I was up waiting and watching for my father or Santa Claus, whoever came first."
Author: Carolee Dean

5. "I've got plenty." Isabelle smiled, kicking her feet up so that her anklets jingled like Christmas bells. "These, for instance. The left one is gold, which is poisonous to demons, and the right one is blessed iron, in case I run across any unfriendly vampires or even faeries, faeries hate iron. They both have strength runes carved into them, so I can pack a hell of a kick. ""Demon hunting and fashion," Clary said. "I never would have thought they went together."
Author: Cassandra Clare

6. "I don't go back home to Sardinia as much as I would like, just for Christmas and family events."
Author: Caterina Murino

7. "One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don't look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don't hold it up and say it's longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn't say for the rest of your life.Say thank you."
Author: Cheryl Strayed

8. "In another Christmas story, Dale Pearson, evil developer, self-absorbed woman hater, and seemingly unredeemable curmudgeon, might be visited in the night by a series of ghosts who, by showing him bleak visions of Christmas future, past, and present, would bring about in him a change to generosity, kindness, and a general warmth toward his fellow man. But this is not that kind of Christmas story, so here, in not too many pages, someone is going to dispatch the miserable son of a bitch with a shovel. That's the spirit of Christmas yet to come in these parts. Ho, ho, ho."
Author: Christopher Moore

9. "[M]y mother read a horror novel every night. She had read every one in the library. When birthdays and Christmas would come, I would consider buying her a new one, the latest Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King or whatever, but I couldn't. I didn't want to encourage her. I couldn't touch my father's cigarettes, couldn't look at the Pall Mall cartons in the pantry. I was the sort of child who couldn't even watch commercials for horror movies - the ad for Magic, the movie where marionette kills people. sent me into a six-month nightmare frenzy. So I couldn't look at her books, would turn them over so their covers wouldn't show, the raised lettering and splotches of blood - especially the V.C. Andrews oeuvre, those turgid pictures of those terrible kids, standing so still, all lit in blue."
Author: Dave Eggers

10. "Residents of the squatter community of Christiana, Denmark, for example, have a Christmastide ritual where they dress in Santa suits, take toys from department stores and distribute them to children on the street, partly just so everyone can relish the images of the cops beating down Santa and snatching the toys back from crying children."
Author: David Graeber

11. "Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world." Winston Churchill Christmas Eve Message, 1941 as printed in "In the Dark Streets Shineth."
Author: David McCullough

12. "Brendan Harris loved everyone now because he loved Katie and Katie loved him. Brendan loved traffic and smog and the sound of jackhammers. He loved his worthless old man who hadn't sent him a single birthday or Christmas card since he'd walked out on Brendan and his mother when Brendan was six. He loved Monday mornings, sitcoms that couldn't make a retard laugh, and standing in line at the RMV. He even loved his job, though he wouldn't be going in ever again."
Author: Dennis Lehane

13. "To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year."
Author: E. B. White

14. "Christmas in L.A. is weird. There's no snow. It's not even cold."
Author: Ellie Goulding

15. "Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world—all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation…the vastness of St. Peter's the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina."
Author: George Eliot

16. "Without the door let sorrow lie,And if for cold it hap to die,We'll bury 't in a Christmas pie,And evermore be merry."
Author: George Wither

17. "From a floor below someone was singing with a karaoke machine, Paul McCartney's 'Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time,' completely out of tune. 'Beyond doubt the worst Christmas song ever written,' New York said to me, quietly. 'Like a request to God to end the universe."
Author: Glen Duncan

18. "Then I learnt of "white Christmas", which again I found very peculiar since we always have a white Christmas at home for it never passes by without eating rice. That is our white Christmas."
Author: Gloria D. Gonsalves

19. "'The Christmas Song,' by Nat King Cole, is not only a masterful performance; to me it just sounds like the holidays. I've never sung it, because Nat's version is so perfect. I gotta leave it alone."
Author: Harry Connick Jr.

20. "Well … yes, and here we go again. But before we get to The Work, as it were, I want to make sure I know how to cope with this elegant typewriter—(and, yes, it appears that I do) —so why not make this quick list of my life's work and then get the hell out of town on the 11:05 to Denver? Indeed. Why not? But for just a moment I'd like to say, for the permanent record, that it is a very strange feeling to be a 40-year-old American writer in this century and sitting alone in this huge building on Fifth Avenue in New York at one o'clock in the morning on the night before Christmas Eve, 2000 miles from home, and compiling a table of contents for a book of my own Collected Works in an office with a tall glass door that leads out to a big terrace looking down on The Plaza Fountain. Very strange."
Author: Hunter S. Thompson

21. "Two things happened on Christmas Day. My father texted me to wish me a "Merry Xmas." Xmas. Couldn't even type out Christmas. So personal. Love you too, Dad."
Author: J. Lynn

22. "Christmas was coming. One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow. The lake froze solid and the Weasley twins were punished for bewitching several snowballs so that they followed Quirrell around, bouncing off the back of his turban."
Author: J.K. Rowling

23. "Dear Judy: Your letter is here. I have read it twice, and with amazement. Do I understand that Jervis has given you, for a Christmas present, the making over of the John Grier Home into a model institution, and that you have chosen me to disburse the money? Me - I, Sallie McBride, the head of an orphan asylum! My poor people, have you lost your senses, or have you become addicted to the use of opium, and is the raving of two fevered imaginations? I am exactly as well fitted to take care of one hundred children as to become the curator of a zoo."
Author: Jean Webster

24. "Dear Aunt Loretta,Thank you so much for the awesome pants! How did you know I wanted that for Christmas?I love the way the pants look on my legs!All my friends will be so jealous that I have my very own pants. Thank you for making this the best Christmas ever!Sincerely, Greg"
Author: Jeff Kinney

25. "I will write as often as I can, but truth be told, I don't have many moments to myself. The queen is in a very bad way and needs everyone who can be at her side. But whenever I undo my buttons to ready myself for bed, I think of you. I imagine your fingers unfastening my gown, opening me like a Christmas parcel for your pleasure. I tingle even now as I think of it, and so I will close before I quite combust and burn the paper."
Author: Jennifer Ashley

26. "I took ten days off and by 11 o'clock on the first morning I had drunk fourteen cups of coffee, read all the newspapers and the Guardian and then… and then what? By lunchtime I was so bored that I decided to hang a few pictures. So I found a hammer, and later a man came to replaster the bits of wall I had demolished. Then I tried to fix the electric gates, which work only when there's an omega in the month. So I went down the drive with a spanner, and later another man came to put them back together again. I was just about to start on the Aga, which had broken down on Christmas Eve, as they do, when my wife took me on one side by my earlobe and explained that builders do not, on the whole, spend their spare time writing, so writers should not build on their days off. It's expensive and it can be dangerous, she said."
Author: Jeremy Clarkson

27. "It always is Christmas Eve, in a ghost story.("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER)"
Author: Jerome K. Jerome

28. "Fantastic! Right in the middle of that long stretch between Christmas and Spring Break, your coats are getting dirty, everything's dark, dingy - what a great time for a movie!"
Author: John Hughes

29. "Brown and Dilke walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration."
Author: John Keats

30. "He strapped a video camera to the hood of his car and we drove around while he filmed us smashing through piles of old dead Christmas trees that residents had left in the alleys and he would set on fire. I could never get Jake to "put out" but it still was a really romantic night for me, so I stayed in touch."
Author: John Waters

31. "Next Christmas he was going to open this shabby sack of hers... and put something in the money compartment. She would fritter it away, of course, in small unimportances; so that in the end she would not know what she had done with it; but perhaps a series of small satisfactions scattered like sequins over the texture of everyday life was of greater worth than the academic satisfaction of owning a collection of fine objects at the back of a drawer."
Author: Josephine Tey

32. "...she saw herself. Christmas Eve. The snowman. Sorting the buttons. Disappointed she didn't have a matching pair for the eyes. Deciding it didn't matter-the large navy and chocolate buttons were all she had..."
Author: Laura Kaye

33. "Nobody spoke for a minute; then Meg said in an altered tone, "You know the reason Mother proposed not having any presents this Christmas was because it is going to be a hard winter for everyone; and she thinks we ought not to spend money for pleasure, when our men are suffering so in the army. We can't do much, but we can make our little sacrifices, and ought to do it gladly. But I am afraid I don't," and Meg shook her head, as she thought regretfully of all the pretty things she wanted."
Author: Louisa May Alcott

34. "You can't cure people of their character,' she read. After this he had crossed something out then gone on, 'You can't even change yourself. Experiments in that direction soon deteriorate into bitter, infuriated struggles. You haul yourself over the wall and glimpse new country. Good! You can never again be what you were! But even as you are congratulating yourself you discover tied to one leg the string of Christmas cards, gas bills, air letters and family snaps which will never allow you to be anyone else. A forty-year-old woman holds up a doll she has kept in a cardboard box under a bed since she was a child. She touches its clothes, which are falling to pieces; works tenderly its loose arm. The expression that trembles on the edge of realizing itself in the slackening muscles of her lips and jaw is indescribably sad. How are you to explain to her that she has lost nothing by living the intervening years of her life? How is she to explain that to you?"
Author: M. John Harrison

35. "One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star"
Author: Maud Hart Lovelace

36. "Yes, seven years old she was, when she finally plucked up the courage to ask her mother what Christmas was all about, and Mrs Castaway replied (once only, after which the subject was forever forbidden): ‘It's the day Jesus Christ died for our sins. Evidently unsuccessfully, since we're still paying for them."
Author: Michel Faber

37. "The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi."
Author: O. Henry

38. "This peppermint winter is so sugar sweetI don't need to taste to believeWhat's December without Christmas Eve."
Author: Owl City

39. "Doesn't he look just like a ring wraith?" she said thoughtfully. "Are you kidding?" replied Cathy, "I most certainly won't be carol singing at your door this Christmas if you've got one of those ugly things hanging on it!" "No, from Lord of the Rings," said Sue impatiently. "I'm sorry," snorted Cathy, "I don't watch pornographic material." "Have you never read a book?!" Sue snapped. "It's about a small man who travels through dangerous lands to drop a ring into a volcano, it's a classic." "Does sound like a small man," she replied, "can't even face his marriage problems full on."
Author: Paul Baxter

40. "All families had their special Christmas food. Ours was called Dutch Bread, made from a dough halfway between bread and cake, stuffed with citron and every sort of nut from the farm - hazel, black walnut, hickory, butternut."
Author: Paul Engle

41. "A department store two days before Christmas Eve is like a city in a state of siege...."
Author: Rachel Cohn

42. "I love snow for the same reason I love Christmas: It brings people together while time stands still. Cozy couples lazily meandered the streets and children trudged sleds and chased snowballs. No one seemed to be in a rush to experience anything other than the glory of the day, with each other, whenever and however it happened."
Author: Rachel Cohn

43. "I lost myself immediately in one of the books, only emerging when the phone rang."Dashiell?" my father intoned. As if someone else with my voice might be answering the phone at my mother's apartment."Yes, Father?""Leeza and I would like to wish you a merry Christmas.""Thank you, Father. And to you, as well."[awkward pause][even more awkward pause]"I hope your mother isn't giving you any trouble."Oh, Father, I love it when you play this game."She told me if I clean all the ashes out of the grate, then I'll be able to help my sisters get ready for the ball.""It's Christmas, Dashiell. Can't you give that attitude a rest?""Merry Christmas, Dad. And thanks for the presents.""What presents?""I'm sorry—those were all from Mom, weren't they?""Dashiell …""I gotta go. The gingerbread men are on"
Author: Rachel Cohn

44. "Tacos will grow on Christmas trees before I learn to carry a tune. Fortunately, it doesn't matter. In karaoke, talent means nada; enthusiasm is everything. What I lack in talent, I make up for in passion. Hence my karaoke problem."
Author: Rob Sheffield

45. "GOD. Sometimes I think there might be a god out there, and that every once in a while he tunes in to see what we're up to, and have a good laugh at how we like to dress him up in various costume. Robes, thorny crowns, yarmulkes and curls, saris and butt-hugging yoga pants. Male, female, a genderless reincarnation factory; a Mother Earth or a withholding Father Christmas. I would think it would amuse the hell out of him. That we're all idolaters, worshiping figments of our own creation who bear no resemblance to him.Maybe he's sitting in some alternate dimension somewhere, saying, 'Shit, I didn't even create the world! I was just cooking my dinner, not paying attention to the heat, and suddenly here was this big band and a few hours later, a bunch of dinosaurs..."
Author: Suzanne Morrison

46. "Every Christmas, all around Ghana, there are tons of these parties and they are full of everything that exists in human life in Ghana and worldwide."
Author: Taiye Selasi

47. "But he hadn't appeared that night. Not the next morning, either. By the time she finally crossed paths with him the following afternoon, his mumbled "Merry Christmas" was the extent of their exchange.It seemed they were back to silence.I don't want you.She tried to ignore the words echoing in her memory. They weren't true, she told herself. She was an expert at deceit; she knew a lie when she heard one.Still. What else to believe, when he avoided her thus?Although he rarely spoke to her over the next two days, Sophia frequently overheard him speaking of her. Even these remarks were the tersest of commands: "Fetch Miss Turner more water," or "See that her canopy doesn't go slack." She felt herself being tended, not unlike a goat. Fed, watered, sheltered. Perhaps she shouldn't complain. Food, water, and shelter were all welcome things.But Sophia was not livestock, and she had other, more profound needs. Needs he seemed intent on neglecting, the infuriating man."
Author: Tessa Dare

48. "Every night is Christmas Eve on old East Main,Sailors and their sweethearts all agree.Neon signs of red and greenShine upon the friendly scene,Welcoming you in from off the sea.Santa's bag is filled with all your dreams come true:Nickel beers that sparkle like champagne,Barmaids who all love to screw,All of them reminding youIt's Christmas Eve on old East Main."
Author: Thomas Pynchon

49. "Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought he'd look in on the Sailor's Grave, his old tin can's tavern on East Main Street."
Author: Thomas Pynchon

50. "I think Christmas is about celebration and come on, on the inside everyone wants to dance."
Author: TobyMac

Christmas Eve Quotes Pictures