Helen Garraway > Helen's Quotes

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
― Mark Twain

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.”
― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“I think you’re a fairy tale. I think you’re magical, and brave, and exquisite. And I hope you'll let me be in your story.”
― Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer

“...only in the surrender of the light could the darkness prevail.”
― David Eddings, King of the Murgos

“He’d used the amulet to read my thoughts again.
I pictured smacking him in the face.”
― Priya Ardis, Ever My Merlin

“Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.”
― China Miéville

“Waiting for the right people isn't going to get us where we want; we need to go out and find..." She groped for the right word. A mission? A project? A job?

"Trouble?" Sicarius suggested.

"An endeavor that will help the city and prove to the emperor that we're undeserving of the bounties on our heads and we're invaluable resources to his regime."

"Trouble," Sicarius said.”
― Lindsay Buroker

“The thing to remember when you're writing is, it's not whether or not what you put on paper is true. It's whether it wakes a truth in your reader.”
― Charles de Lint, The Blue Girl

“You can only fight one man at a time with a sword, but, with a pen, you can compose a lecture to bore legions of enemy troops to death.”
― Lindsay Buroker, Blood and Betrayal

“a paper star that has been unfolded and refolded
into a tiny unicorn but the unicorn remembers a time
when it was a star and an earlier time when it was part of
a book and sometimes the unicorn dreams of the time before
it was a book when it was a tree and the time even longer
before that when it was a different sort of star”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“When God Created Mothers"

When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said. "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one."

And God said, "Have you read the specs on this order?" She has to be completely washable, but not plastic. Have 180 moveable parts...all replaceable. Run on black coffee and leftovers. Have a lap that disappears when she stands up. A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair. And six pairs of hands."

The angel shook her head slowly and said. "Six pairs of hands.... no way."

It's not the hands that are causing me problems," God remarked, "it's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have."

That's on the standard model?" asked the angel. God nodded.

One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word."

God," said the angel touching his sleeve gently, "Get some rest tomorrow...."

I can't," said God, "I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick...can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger...and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower."

The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed.

But tough!" said God excitedly. "You can imagine what this mother can do or endure."

Can it think?"

Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator.

Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek.

There's a leak," she pronounced. "I told You that You were trying to put too much into this model."

It's not a leak," said the Lord, "It's a tear."

What's it for?"

It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, pain, loneliness, and pride."

You are a genius, " said the angel.

Somberly, God said, "I didn't put it there.”
― Erma Bombeck, When God Created Mothers

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“Being soaked alone is cold. Being soaked with your best friend is an adventure.”
― Emily Wing Smith, Back When You Were Easier to Love

“Remember, darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good.”
― P.C. Cast, Betrayed

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.”
― Carl Sagan

“Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can.”
― Danny Kaye

“Keep reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“He looks up at me with his night-colored eyes, beautiful and terrible all at once. “For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.”

I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?”

He grins up at me. “They missed.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
― C.S. Lewis

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
― Saul Bellow

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“Believe in yourself. You are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and capable of more than you imagine.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“The desert is so bare; you forget that such beautiful plants exist, along with the creatures that nurture them.
Kayerille's face softened. There is beauty everywhere. sometimes you have to look a little harder to find it.”
― Helen Garraway, Sentinals Recovery

“Not all that was good was in the light; there was good in the dark too, if you bothered to look.”
― Helen Garraway, SoulBreather

“Bright perfection wore on the nerves after a while, and Solanji relaxed into the soothing absence of expectation.”
― Helen Garraway, SoulBreather

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings