Arielle Titze > Arielle's Quotes

“Running out the anchor line, the pirates babbled to one another, and in the tangle of their barbaric language, Aspasia listened for one word—Athens. It lit up the darkness in her mind, like the single glint her eyes fixed on above the distant gray-green hills.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“That was how you survived. See the world as it is. Not as you think it is. Not as you want it to be, or think it should be. Not even as it was yesterday. See it exactly as it is, right now.”
― Barry Kirwan, When the children come

“And in that vast emptiness, two heads bobbed above the surface without a sound, just one hundred feet from them.”
― Michael Parker, The Devil's Trinity

“There was only one sentence in it. ‘Tell no one about the 99 steps. Monsieur Neuf’!”
― Carolyn Keene, The Mystery of the 99 Steps

“When you are an addict and you get caught, you always seem to be at your lowest point.”
― Andrew Mann, Such Unfortunates

“Hercules And The Wagoner A CARTER was driving a wagon along a country lane, when the wheels sank down deep into a rut. The rustic driver, stupefied and aghast, stood looking at the wagon, and did nothing but utter loud cries to Hercules to come and help him. Hercules, it is said, appeared and thus addressed him: "Put your shoulders to the wheels, my man. Goad on your bullocks, and never more pray to me for help, until you have done your best to help yourself, or depend upon it you will henceforth pray in vain." Self-help is the best help.”
― Aesop, Aesop's Fables:

“I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.”
― Gillian Flynn

“Mead.
O sweet elixir,
Ye bless the lips and steal the wits.
 ”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“If you always try to subjugate people by coercion, because you are strong, then sooner or later you will run into somebody who is just as strong, if not stronger. Then you'll be in trouble.”
― Max Nowaz, The Polymorph

“Age is terrible thief. Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back”
― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, The Swan Thieves

“Esse quam videri," Celia says. "To be, rather than to seem.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“When the well is dry we know the value of water”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

“I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about other people’s time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“Something deep inside me lurched.
The stirring was as startling and unpleasant as it was thrilling and revolutionary.”
― Stephanie Perkins, Lola and the Boy Next Door