Jay > Jay's Quotes

“And we'll see if one tree won't grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“You are able enough to rule the world, but wicked enough to disturb it.”
― Luo Guanzhong, Romance of the Three Kingdoms

“You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly. She told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I'm not ashamed of my upbringing, but the more you tell a person about yourself, the more power you hand over.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“There’s still no happy ending for a woman who wants it all, the kind who lies awake aching with furious hunger, unspent ambition making her bones rattle in her body.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Jonathan Swift had it right: “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.”
― Carl T. Bergstrom, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

“Nature and Science are the two most prestigious journals in the basic sciences, but they too have published some howlers.”
― Carl T. Bergstrom

“For the first time in his life, he is unremarkable, and this feels like power.”
― Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

“Somewhere out there, you knew, wealthy people were barricaded in their fortresses, fed and warm, if not happy, but soon you stopped thinking of them. You stopped thinking about other people at all.”
― Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

“The average American, one judge ruled, cannot reasonably be expected to visually distinguish between various varieties of persons of Asian origin. As if they were types of apples, or breeds of dogs; as if those persons of Asian origin did not count as average Americans themselves. As if any of this might be justified by careful distinguishing on the part of the one wielding the bat.”
― Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

“Rage was only useful if you were allowed to do anything with it.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“It's because you're too much alike. What did the abbess used to say? That our own flaws infuriate us in other people?”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“She should at least keep chickens,” said the dust-wife. “Or take up gardening. Immortality is wretched, but you can always make the best of it.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“Everyone have their souls still? Shadows still attached? Then let's go before that changes.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“She made dramatic plans in the darkness and discarded them in daylight.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“The Four Placid Seas are as wide as the years are long. A wild goose flies over a pond, leaving behind a voice in the wind. A man passes through this world, leaving behind a name.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“Do you think we are words written on a page by the gods, and that there will always be rich and poor, the powerful and the powerless, noble and commoner? Do you think that all our dreams are doomed to forever fail?”
― Ken Liu

“If one abandons all ideals, then the world will be without substance.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“Honor is not everything, Mata. Sometimes parents just want their children to be safe and ordinary.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“Strange that a poison and its antidote would grow so close together.”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“You have to both experience reality and construct it.”
― Ken Liu, The Wall of Storms

“Luck is not much of a promise.”
― Ken Liu, The Wall of Storms

“If you can't laugh at death as a god, then you might as well become a mortal.”
― Ken Liu, The Veiled Throne

“Can't you hear a whisper of the voices of their ancestors or feel a tremor of their breath? It's evil to burn or desecrate these, as terrible as the killing of the defenseless.”
― Ken Liu, The Veiled Throne

“Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either. Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt. No matter where we go, our love will stretch out to hold us, and that makes me feel like … like everything will be okay.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“On a broad level, speculative fiction is about encounters with the unknown, whether that takes the form of aliens or werewolf or eldritch creatures beyond mortal ken. Similarly, much of the diaspora experience is tied to uncertainty. You journey to a strange land you’ve only heard about in stories, one where the language is unfamiliar and the customs perplexing. You have a few things with you—a sword, a bow, a bag full of spells and paperwork for a Green Card application—but it’s still a terrifying experience. While part of that terror is necessarily tied to survival, another element is the fear of change—the literal change in environment and the ways you change in response. For both SFF protagonists and new immigrants, there’s the major question of how much you choose to fight against or welcome those change while maintaining vestiges of your previous self.”
― Cynthia Zhang