em > em's Quotes

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

“Although wisdom is built on life experiences, the mere accumulation of years guarantees nothing.”
― Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World

“Good people can do bad things, make bad decisions. It doesn't make them bad people.”
― Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World

“I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can't imagine someone else's point of view.”
― Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World

“As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls.”
― Sonia Sotormayor

“To save one is to save the world,”
― Heather Morris, The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that unlike money, unlike vengeance, even unlike justice, or rights, or the goodwill of others, only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination.”
― Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”
― Toni Morrison

“You can't own a human being. You can't lose what you don't own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don't, do you? And neither does he. You're turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can't value you more than you value yourself.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“Lonely, ain't it?
Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.”
― Toni Morrison, Sula

“The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
― Toni Morrison

“We all have yavashaki, or stealthy, moments, but we become powerful as women the moment we stop living a lie.”
― Masih Alinejad, The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
― Elie Wiesel

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident

“Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not.”
― Elie Wiesel

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“You are your best thing”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“It's not a big thing, but I guess it's true--big things are often just small things that are noticed.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“My arms are killing me.
I didn't know words could be so heavy.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“I'm not the messenger at all.
I'm the message. ”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“Of course you're real-like any thought or any story. It's real when you're in it.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“I realize that nothing belongs to her anymore and she belongs to everything.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger