magpie > magpie's Quotes

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He is half of my soul, as the poets say.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn't chosen.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Enjoy memories, yes, but don't be a slave to who you wish you once had been.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“May your Paths be safe, your Floors unbroken and may the House fill your eyes with Beauty.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“Perhaps even people you like and admire immensely can make you see the World in ways you would rather not.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Even in the most terrible chapters of my life I have always known a certain, savage beauty— in the color of the sky, the sense of birds flying close to my ear, the feel of the soft-loam earth and the joy of running through the untended woods until I became more animal than spirit.”
― Claire Oshetsky, Poor Deer

“She has just learned that some things are forever, and other things are never-again.”
― Claire Oshetsky, Poor Deer

“The world can think you’re all wrong if there’s one person who thinks you’re just right.”
― Jess Kidd, The Night Ship

“Unlike stories, real life, when it has passed, inclines toward obscurity, not clarity.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child

“Not for you,” Lila replies ardently, “you’re my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls.”
― Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

“You see? In the fairy tales one does as one wants, and in reality one does what one can.”
― Elena Ferrante, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

“There are people who leave and people who know how to be left.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name

“To write, you have to want something to survive you.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child

“What a waste it would be, I said to myself, to ruin our story by leaving too much space for ill feelings: ill feelings are inevitable, but the essential thing is to keep them in check.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Story of the Lost Child

“Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier;
I have seen worse sights than this.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves- in their depravity- design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“Above all, there was understanding. She felt as if a mist had been lifted from her eyes, enabling her to look upon and comprehend the significance of life, that monster made up of beauty and brutality.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening " and Selected Stories: Microsoft Reader Level 5

“There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing, when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day. She liked then to wander alone into strange and unfamiliar places. She discovered many a sunny, sleepy corner, fashioned to dream in. And she found it good to dream and to be alone and unmolested.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why—when it did not seem worth while to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.”
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Did marriage end the cosmic loneliness of the unmated? Did marriage compel love like the sun the day?”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation. Then Janie felt a pain remorseless sweet that left her limp and languid.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“You never know the reasons behind why a person behaves a certain way. Even if they hurt someone else or do something you can’t understand, then they will have had a reason. You don’t have to forgive them but you may feel lighter in yourself if you do. But sometimes it is too much to forgive.”
― Molly Aitken, The Island Child

“But when the heart grows too full, it overflows. And mine, inevitably, overflows on to a page.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree