Ann > Ann's Quotes

“When we are sad—at least I am like this—it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to the things that don't change. Your descriptions of the desert—that oceanic, endless glare—are terrible but also very beautiful. Maybe there's something to be said for the rawness and emptiness of it all. The light of long ago is different from the light of today and yet here, in this house, I'm reminded of the past at every turn. But when I think of you, it's as if you've gone away to sea on a ship—out in a foreign brightness where there are no paths, only stars and sky.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“That’s just what translation is, I think. That’s all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they’re trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“English did not just borrow words from other languages; it was stuffed to the brim with foreign influences, a Frankenstein vernacular. And Robin found it incredible, how this country, whose citizens prided themselves so much on being better than the rest of the world, could not make it through an afternoon tea without borrowed goods.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“I am me. And that should be enough, it always has been enough. I was the one who didn’t get that. And now I do. I’m an actor, I’m a writer. I’m a person. And a good one at that. I want good things for myself, and others, and I can continue to work for these things. There is a reason I’m still here. And figuring out why is the task that has been put in front of me. And it will be revealed. There is no rush, no desperation. Just the fact that I am here, and I care about people, is the answer. Now when I wake up, I wake up curious, wondering what the world has in store for me, and I for it. And that’s enough to go on.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

“Він уже вловив основну тенденцію цієї модерної інквізиції - це обернути людину в ганчірку, тварину, в безвольного пса, що скавулить і плазує, готовий лизати що завгодно, від чобіт починаючи. Обернути її в ганебну моральну руїну, розчавити й знищити те, що називається людською душею... А тоді вже викинути її на фізичний смітник.”
― Іван Багряний, Сад Гетсиманський

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“But as she tried to unravel him, he grew increasingly tragic and terrifyingly human”
― SenLinYu, Manacled

“he’d set fire to the world around him but never let a flame touch her”
― SenLinYu, Anthology

“Expecto Patronum!” She poured every drop of emotion she had into the spell.

White light exploded from her wand, growing larger and larger until her Patronus fully corporalized.

Not her otter.

Not a blur.

Hermione stared up as a full-sized Antipodean Opaleye emerged from her wand. It filled the sky. It threw back its head, roaring and unfurling enormous wings. It opened its mouth, and white flames poured from it.”
― SenLinYu, Manacled

“I must admit,” he said in a low voice as though it were a confession, “if anyone had told me that you’d become so lovely, I would never have come near you. I was rather blindsided when I first saw you again.”

She stared at him in confusion.

“You’re like a rose in a graveyard,” he said, and his lips curved into a bitter smile. “I wonder what you could have turned into without the war.”
― SenLinYu, Manacled

“Someday I am going to love him in a moment that isn't stolen, she promised herself.

-Chapter 35”
― SenLinYu, Manacled

“It takes courage to let down your armor, to welcome people to see you as you are. Sometimes I feel the same as you: I can’t risk having people behold me as I truly am. But there’s also a small voice in the back of my mind, a voice that tells me, “You will miss so much by being so guarded.”
― Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals

“In the meantime, I hope you will find your place, wherever you are. Even in the silence, I hope you will find the words you need to share.”
― Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals

“But time will slowly heal you, as it is doing for me. There are good days and there are difficult days. Your grief will never fully fade; it will always be with you--a shadow you carry in your soul--but it will become fainter as your life becomes brighter. You will learn to live outside of it again, as impossible as that may sound. Others who share your pain will also help you heal. Because you are not alone. Not in your fear or your grief or your hopes or your dreams. You are not alone.”
― Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals

“My favorite season is autumn, because my mum and I both believed that’s the only time when magic can be tasted in the air.”
― Rebecca Ross, Divine Rivals

“The ones that hurt the most always say the least.”
― Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

“One does not need the size of a dragon to have the soul of a dragon.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Destiny

“When you fear to fail, you fear something that has not happened yet. You predict your own failure, and by inaction, lock yourself into it.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Destiny

“Too many folk, women and men, love the person they wish to be, as if by loving that person, or being loved by that person, they could attain the importance they long for.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Destiny

“Do you do this because you live such short lives? Tell yourselves wild tales of what might happen tomorrow, and feel all the feelings of events that will never happen? Perhaps to make up for the pasts you cannot recall, you invent futures that will not exist.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Destiny

“Wait for you? Not likely. I've always had to run ahead of you and show you the way.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

“Like a flower pressed flat and dried, we try to hold it still and say, this is exactly how it was the day I first saw it. But like the flower, the past cannot be trapped that way. It loses its fragrance and and its vitality, its fragility becomes brittleness and its colors fade. And when next you look on the flower, you know that it is not at all what you sought to capture, that that moment has fled forever.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

“We are the sum of all we have done added to the sum of all that has been done to us.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Running might take her forward, it could even take her home; but it couldn't take her back–not ten minutes, ten hours, not ten years or days. And that was tough, as Hely would say. Tough: since back was the way she wanted to go, since the past was the only place she wanted to be.”
― Donna Tartt, The Little Friend

“Tragedy has a way of breaking gentle things and soldering the shattered pieces together in ways we can't control. Some, it remakes into stronger, more resilient creatures. In others, the pieces fuse before they heal, leaving only razor-sharp edges. I can offer you no other explanation or excuse for the way she's cut you over the years.”
― Rebecca Yarros, The Things We Leave Unfinished

“Perhaps the kindest thing I could do for the characters would be to leave their stories unfinished. Leave them with their possibilities, their potential, even if they only exist in my own mind.”
― Rebecca Yarros, The Things We Leave Unfinished