Katie Marsh > Katie's Quotes

“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
― Brene Brown

“I wish someone had told me this simple but confusing truth: Even when everything’s going your way you can still be sad. Or anxious. Or uncomfortably numb. Because you can’t always control your brain or your emotions even when things are perfect.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“That’s not the same. What happened to you, to your species, it’s . . . it doesn’t even compare.’ ‘Why? Because it’s worse?’ She nodded. ‘But it still compares. If you have a fractured bone, and I’ve broken every bone in my body, does that make your fracture go away? Does it hurt you any less, knowing that I am in more pain?”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“When you understand, that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we'll figure out who you're going to be.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

“He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Sir,"she said,"you are no gentleman!"

An apt observation,"he answered airily."And, you, Miss, are no lady.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“As it turned out, imagining the fate of seven billion people was far less emotionally affecting than imagining the fate of one.”
― Neal Stephenson, Seveneves

“You don't necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don't have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“One of my biggest weaknesses, one that has always shamed me, is that I have always been lonely. I've struggled to make friends because I can be socially awkward, because I'm weird, because I live in my head.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
― Brene Brown

“You can choose COURAGE or you can choose COMFORT, but you cannot choose BOTH!”
― Brené Brown

“When you come out of the grips of a depression there is an incredible relief, but not one you feel allowed to celebrate. Instead, the feeling of victory is replaced with anxiety that it will happen again, and with shame and vulnerability when you see how your illness affected your family, your work, everything left untouched while you struggled to survive. We come back to life thinner, paler, weaker … but as survivors. Survivors who don’t get pats on the back from coworkers who congratulate them on making it. Survivors who wake to more work than before because their friends and family are exhausted from helping them fight a battle they may not even understand. I hope to one day see a sea of people all wearing silver ribbons as a sign that they understand the secret battle, and as a celebration of the victories made each day as we individually pull ourselves up out of our foxholes to see our scars heal, and to remember what the sun looks like.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Oh, hell,” Kelsier said. “There’s actually a God?” “Yes.” Kelsier decked him.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Secret History

“No matter what choice I made, I was never going to have a normal life, really. I looked around and immediately knew what to do next.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Binti

“It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“People do not knowingly join “cults” that will ultimately destroy and kill them. People join self-help groups, churches, political movements, college campus dinner socials, and the like, in an effort to be a part of something larger than themselves. It is mostly the innocent and naive who find themselves entrapped. In their openhearted endeavor to find meaning in their lives, they walk blindly into the promise of ultimate answers and a higher purpose. It is usually only gradually that a group turns into or reveals itself as a cult, becomes malignant, but by then it is often too late.”
― Deborah Layton, Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple

“There was always so much I didn’t know, but not knowing was part of it all.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Home

“I felt the pain and the glory of growth, was straining and shuddering with it.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Home

“That's a lovely idea, Diana,' said Anne enthusiastically. 'Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn't beautiful to begin with…making it stand in people's thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea