Martina Litty > Martina's Quotes

“Kaede told herself that what she felt was only a little seed; she would simply not water it. It wouldn't grow any larger than this tiny prickle of attraction. She wouldn't let it.

But that night after everyone had left, and they had all spread their blankets on the floor of the hall, Kaede lay awake for some time, trying to make out the sound of Taisin's breathing in the dark.”
― Malinda Lo, Huntress

“What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn't know it's dead.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“I want you to grab a rag,
a sponge, the corner of your shirt―
anything you can find—to sop
up the liquid—so much of it
you can’t tell what’s what—be it
mucus or bile or vomit or blood―
as if every water has been brought up
for this giving-in, as if his body
is already a river and rushing

away.”
― Nickole Brown, To Those Who Were Our First Gods

“Now, don’t play stupid. You knew
this was coming. You’ve seen it

enough times.”
― Nickole Brown, To Those Who Were Our First Gods

“I feel like I could dive right into your arms.
I like you.
I feel you.
I fell right into your arms.
I live in you.
I feel I could right you.
I lie to you.
I fell cold in your arms.
I feel like I could die in your arms.
I could die yours.”
― Thomas Penny

“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Boys like him didn't die; they got bronzed and installed outside public libraries.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Earlier in the year, she had had a vision of kissing him, and she could still picture that quite easily. But the sensible part of Blue, which was usually the only part of her, thought that had to do more with Richard Campbell Gansey III having a nice mouth than with any blossoming romance.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“As always, [Adam's] features intrigued Blue. They were not quite conventionally handsome, but they were interesting. He had the typical Henriette prominent cheekbones and deep-set eyes, but his version of them was more delicate. It made him seem a little alien. A little impenetrable.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Adam's hand glided over her bare elbow. The touch was a whisper in a language she didn't speak very well.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“[He] considered what it must've been like to live like that, always waiting for your door to be kicked in. Not pleasant, he thought. Probably not pleasant at all.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“He hadn't realized yet that Gansey could persuade even the sun to pause and give him the time.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Her mother waved a card at her in farewell. “Bye. Will you be home for dinner? I’m making midlife crisis.” “Oh,” Blue said, “I guess I’ll have a slice. If you’re making it already.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“When she returned, she leaned on the table beside Adam, who touched her wrist. She didn't know what to do in response. Touch it back? The moment had passed. She resented her body for not giving her the correct answer.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“After a moment, he calmed enough to see how his anger was a separate thing inside him, a dingy, surprise gift from his father.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“He sat in the reading room by himself, the diffuse morning light rendering him soft and dusty. He had removed one of the tarot decks from its bag and lined all of the cards faceup in three long rows. Now he leaned on the table and studied the image on each, one at at time, shuffling on his elbows to the next when he was through. He looked nothing like the Adam who'd lost his temper and everything like the Adam she had first met. That was what was frightening, though⁠—there'd been no warning.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Do you think you're a train wreck?'

'That would mean I was on the tracks to start with,' he replied.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“This fellow looks unhappy,” he observed. The art depicted a man stuck with ten swords. The victim lay on his face, as most people did after being stuck with ten swords.

“That’s a fellow after Calla’s done with him,” Maura said.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“She wore a dress Ronan thought looked like a lampshade. Whatever sort of lamp it belonged on, Gansey clearly wished he had one.
Ronan wasn't a fan of lamps.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Matthew Lynch was a golden, indiscriminate pit into which the world threw food.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“His heart smack[ed] against his ribs like a bumblebee at a window.”
― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“How sweet. That rain. How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Is that what art is? To be touched thinking what we feel is ours when, in the end, it was someone else, in longing, who finds us?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I am thinking of beauty again, how some things are hunted because we have deemed them beautiful. If, relative to the history of our planet, an individual life is so short, a blink, as they say, then to be gorgeous, even from the day you're born to the day you die, is to be gorgeous only briefly.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“& remember, loneliness is still time spent with the world.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“I am writing you from inside a body that used to be yours. Which is to say, I am writing as a son.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence - but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Có nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?

I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous