Natalie Harvey > Natalie 's Quotes

“It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“But of course everything presses forward, even as we dig our feet against the reality of it all.”
― Carrie Ryan, The Dead-Tossed Waves

“As the hours crept by, the afternoon sunlight bleached all the books on the shelves to pale, gilded versions of themselves and warmed the paper and ink inside the covers so that the smell of unread words hung in the air.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

“Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air, or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable, never-ending struggle.”
― Scott Westerfeld

“I don't like hope very much. In fact, I hate it. It's the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard. It's bad news. The worst. It's sharp sticks and cherry bombs. When hope shows up, it's only a matter of time until someone gets hurt.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution

“The featureless trundle of my existence began to change. At the time, I didn't have the insight to wonder at the transient nature of despair, but now that I'm older I've seen how little it takes to turn a person's life around for better or worse. An event will do, or an idea. Another person. An idea of a person ”
― Meg Rosoff, What I Was

“Mama, Mama, help me get home
I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt
It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut.

Mama, Mama, help me get home
I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck
It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck.

Mama, Mama, put me to bed
I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead.
I met an Invalid, and fell for his art
He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.

-From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“Most of us won't see one another after graduation, and even if we do it will be different. We'll be different. We'll be adults--cured, tagged and labeled and paired and identified and placed neatly on our life path, perfectly round marbles set to roll down even, well-defined slopes.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“One of the strangest things about life is that it will chug on, blind and oblivious, even as your private world - your little carved-out sphere - is twisting and morphing, even breaking apart. One day you have parents; the next day you're an orphan. One day you have a place and a path. The next day you're lost in the wilderness.
And still the sun rises and clouds mass and drift and people shop for groceries and toilets flush and blinds go up and down. That's when you realize that most of it - life, the relentless mechanism of existing - isn't about you. It doesn't include you at all. It will thrust onward even after you've jumped the edge. Even after you're dead.”
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

“Is there anything sweeter than the touch of another as she pulls a dead bug from your fur?”
― Katherine Applegate, The One and Only Ivan

“Then, I turned around and walked to my room and closed my door and put my head under my pillow and let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.”
― Stephen Chbosky

“Books are like truth serum-- if you don't read, you can't figure out what's real.”
― Rodman Philbrick, Freak the Mighty

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“This business of really knowing people, deep down, including your own self, it is not something you can learn in school or from a book. It takes your whole being to do it—your eyes and your ears, your brain and your heart. Maybe your heart most of all.”
― James Howe, The Misfits

“When you're living through them, events are nothing more than stuff that happens. You're not thinking about significance. Significance only comes when you look back at your life.”
― James Howe, The Misfits

“When you're living through it, though, especially when you are twelve and you think the whole world is changing until you realize it isn't the world, it's you, no piece seems little. It's all so big you think it can kill you. But it doesn't. Which is why the story goes on.”
― James Howe, The Misfits

“Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.”
― Rebecca Stead, Liar & Spy

“If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“It's one thing to fall in love. It's another to feel someone else fall in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“I wake up thinking of yesterday. The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday.”
― David Levithan, Every Day

“I realized that every lesson, conference, response, and assignment I taught must lead students away from me and toward their autonomy as literate people.”
― Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“That is surely the truth, at least for now. But perhaps you have not noticed: the truth is forever changing.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Gil has put his book down and is gazing at something inside his head.”
― Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone

“Someday I'll understand more of these things. At the moment I just have to think them through. Not everything you want to know is explained properly on Google.”
― Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone

“Look, I say. You can't just let your thoughts float around in the ether and hope eventually they'll connect with something. It's absurd.
No, it's not, Gil says. Lots of good things happen that way. Penicillin. Teflon. Smart dust. Something happens that you weren't expecting and it shifts the outcome completely. You have to be open to it.
When I open my brain, I tell him, things bounce around and fall out. They don't connect with anything. Maybe I haven't got enough points of reference stored up yet.
You're young, he says, that's probably it. When I let my thoughts float around, I trust that they'll latch on to something useful in the end or make an association I wouldn't necessarily have predicted. I'm trusting that they'll find the right thought to complete, all by themselves. The right bit of fact to ping. You have to trust your brain sometimes.”
― Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone