Kinga > Kinga's Quotes

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“A shared history does not entitle you to a future, my friend.”
― Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn

“The parts of me that I love the most are the parts that belong to her.”
― Krista Ritchie, Addicted After All

“Back then,” he says, “I was so addicted to you.” He truly smiles, a very, very rare one. “I still am.”
― Krista Ritchie, Addicted After All

“Lily Calloway...all this time, your superpower has been loving me.”
― Krista Ritchie, Addicted After All

“There’s something about Lily that makes all the terrible parts of me seem irrelevant. That makes a bad day momentary and a good one infinite.
It’s love like this that’s worth living for.”
― Krista Ritchie, Addicted After All

“In his eyes, I’m some kind of perfect.”
― Krista Ritchie, Addicted After All

“No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it. Little sparks cause fires, too.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“And yet, it occurs to me now that we can never run with our lies indefinitely. Sooner or later we are forced to confront their darkness. We can choose then when, not the if. And the longer we wait, the more painful and uncertain it will be.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“This is how I lived back then– through books. I locked myself into their stories, dreamt of their characters at night, pretended to be them. They were my armour against the hard edges of reality. I carried them with me wherever I went, like a talisman in my pocket, thinking of them as almost more real than the people around me, who spoke and lived in denial, destined, I thought, to never do anything worth recounting.”
― Tomasz Jedrowski, Swimming in the Dark

“But we’re in Earth-616, love. We’re going to have our happy ending. It just may take us awhile to get there.”
― Krista Ritchie, Thrive

“I’m remarrying you, Lil. Fuck, I’d remarry you a hundred times until it stuck.”
― Krista Ritchie, Ricochet

“I had no one before Rose. No true friends. No family, not really.
Now I have her. I have people I care about. People that I want to protect.
Now I have everything.
The only thing about having everything is that you can lose it all.”
― Krista Ritchie, Kiss the Sky

“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

“Fire and water looked so lovely together. It was a pity they destroyed each other by nature.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic

“People will seek to use you or destroy you. If you want to live, you must pick a side. So do not shirk from war, child. Do not flinch from suffering. When you hear screaming, run toward it.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic

“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

“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

“She liked listening to Nezha talk. He was so hopeful, so optimistic, and so stupid.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic

“She terrifies him, and he loves her so much it hurts.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Drowning Faith

“But eventually, you'll have to ask yourself precisely what you're fighting for. And you'll have to find a reason to live past vengeance.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic

“He loves her laugh; that sharp, sudden sound; the cynical laugh that always comes too quick, like it’s ripped out of her. He loves her quick, confident grin. He loves her resilience, her bravery, even her impulsiveness. She’s everything he’s not: unbound, reckless, free. He’s never known anyone like her. She terrifies him, and he loves her so much it hurts.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Drowning Faith

“She remembered the first time she'd ever laid eyes on Nezha, and then all the times thereafter. It hurt to see him. It hurt so much.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“They would take back the south with sheer numbers. The Mugenese and the Republic were strong, but the south was many. And if southerners were dirt like all the legends said, then they would crush their enemies with the overwhelming force of the earth until they could only dream of breathing. They would bury them with their bodies. They would drown them in their blood.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“The Keju is a ruse to keep uneducated peasants right where they’ve always been. You slip past the Keju, they’ll find a way to expel you anyway. The Keju keeps the lower classes sedated. It keeps us dreaming. It’s not a ladder for mobility; it’s a way to keep people like me exactly where they were born.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War

“I am the force of creation, I am
the end and the beginning. The world is a painting and I hold the brush. I
am a god.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

“She was a goddess. She was a monster. She‘d nearly destroyed this country. And then she‘d given it one last, gasping chance to live.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Burning God

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