defne > defne's Quotes

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don’t know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together–my future, my past, the whole of my life–and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who remains.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Ruin me, ruin us, and I’ll let you.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“She’s the only divine thing he’s ever believed in. The only creature in this vast, cruel land who could kill him. And sometimes, in his loveliest dreams, he imagines she does.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Drowning Faith

“Oh, but history moved in such vicious circles.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“I don't love you. And I can kill anything.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“You humans always think you’re destined for things, for tragedy or for greatness. Destiny is a myth. Destiny is the only myth. The gods choose nothing. You chose.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“Great danger is always associated with great power. The difference between the great and the mediocre is that the great are willing to take the risk.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“You can’t do this for me,” he said. “I won’t let you.”
“It’s not for you. It’s not a favor. It’s the cruelest thing I could do.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“You do not follow me because I am the strongest. Pax is. You do not follow me because I am the brightest. Mustang is. You follow me because you do not know where you are going. I do.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“Man cannot be freed by the same injustice that enslaved it.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“You and I keep looking for light in the darkness, expecting it to appear. But it already has.” I touch his shoulder. “We’re it, boyo. Broken and cracked and stupid as we are, we’re the light, and we’re spreading.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“Hic sunt leones. Here be lions.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“For seven hundred years, my people have been enslaved without voice, without hope. Now I am their sword. And I do not forgive. I do not forget. So let him lead me onto his shuttle. Let him think he owns me. Let him welcome me into his house, so I might burn it down.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“They pushed and pushed for so long. They knew I was something dangerous, something different. Sooner or later, they had to know I would snap and come to cut them down. Or perhaps they think I'm still a child. The fools. Alexander was a child when he ruined his first nation.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“I am Cassius Bellona, son of Tiberius, son of Julia, brother of Darrow, Morning Knight of the Solar Republic, and my honor remains.”
― Pierce Brown, Light Bringer

“My wife is not as fickle as a flame. She is an ocean. I knew from the first that I cannot own her, cannot tame her, but I am the only storm that moves her depths and stirs her tides. And that is more than enough.”
― Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

“Men call him father, liberator, warlord, Slave King, Reaper. But he feels a boy as he falls toward the war-torn planet, his armor red, his army vast, his heart heavy. It is the tenth year of war and the thirty-third of his life.”
― Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

“The destroyer of a civilization too often resembles its founders.”
― Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

“Find someone who loves you the way my girlfriend pushes me off a cliff. Without hesitation. With full confidence in your abilities, with the rock-steady belief that your relationship can handle it, and with complete faith that when you come out of the water, assuming you survive, you will totally forgive them for the push. Almost certainly forgive them. Probably.
Bonus points if you find someone with enough chutzpah to say Bon Voyage while they do it.”
― Rick Riordan, The Chalice of the Gods

“That afternoon, I did something unusual. I visited the library. Yeah, I know. I could almost hear that turntable needle scratch in your head as you tried to process that idea. If I told you I fell into Tartarus again, or got swallowed by a giant, or had to go bungee jumping in a volcano, you’d be like, Yeah, that makes sense. But Percy visiting a library? That’s way off brand.”
― Rick Riordan, The Chalice of the Gods

“To his left was my buddy Hera, goddess of making Percy miserable.”
― Rick Riordan, The Chalice of the Gods

“Annabeth has this magic power where she can look into the future and figure out how long it will take to do certain things. She calls her power "scheduling," which directly overrules my magic power of procrastination.”
― Rick Riordan, The Chalice of the Gods