Ida > Ida's Quotes

“When you figured out Sam's dead mother's name, you decided that it was fate, and from that day forward, Sam would be your brother. A name is destiny, if you think it is.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“What is a game?' Marx said. 'It is tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“It isn't a sadness, but a joy, that we don't do the same things for the length of our lives.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“And besides, is death really so terrible a thing? It seems terrible to you, because you are young, but who is to say he is not better off now than you are? Or—if death is a journey to another place—that you will not see him again?” He opened his lexicon and began to search for his place. “It does not do to be frightened of things about which you know nothing,” he said. “You are like children. Afraid of the dark.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Horrific as it was, the present dark, I was afraid to leave it for the other, permanent dark – jelly and bloat, the muddy pit. I had seen the shadow of it on Bunny’s face – stupid terror; the whole world opening upside down; his life exploding in a thunder of crows and the sky expanding empty over his stomach like a white ocean. Then nothing. Rotten stumps, sowbugs crawling in the fallen leaves. Dirt and dark.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Perhaps Nickel was the very afterlife that awaited him, with a White House down the hill and an eternity of oatmeal and an infinite brotherhood of broken boys.”
― Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“Don't you see?" said Calla. "He wasn't coming to pay your debt. He was coming to see if you'd returned to pay it yourself." Lila felt her face go hot. "I do not know why you two are circling each other like stars. It is not my cosmic dance. But I do know that you come asking after one another, when only a few strides and a handful of stars divide you.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows

“She was a thief, a runaway, a pirate, a magician.
She was fierce, and powerful, and terrifying.
She was still a mystery.
And he loved her.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“A low whistle behind him as Alucard appeared at the entrance.
'Picking out a gift?' asked the captain.
'No.'
'Good, then take this'. He dropped a ring into Kell's hand.
Kell frowned. 'I'm flattered, but I think you're asking the wrong brother.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“Lila smiled at that, one of those smiles that made Kell profoundly nervous. The kind of smile usually followed by a weapon.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“His heart slowed, winding down like a music box, a season at its end.
The last air left Holland's lungs.
And then, at last, the world breathed in.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“It wasn’t a good-bye, not really.
What was the word for parting?
Anoshe.
That was it.
Until another day.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among all those who survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not only that your death could mean more than your living, but that your death could mean more than death itself—which, because it is inevitable, means nothing.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“Where does all our effort go? It’s hard not to envy the monsters when you see how good they have it. And how unbothered they are at being monsters.”
― Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

“To wake up from a dream you have been dreaming since birth is powerful. But to wake up from a dream you have been dreaming from birth with almost a hundred million people, brothers and strangers alike, a collective nightmare, a nightmare we had been imbibing all our lives and passing around to one another, feeding innocently to our newborns—that we are worthless, that we deserve no better than the filth we live in . . . If there is a Judgment Day, this was it.”
― Noor Naga, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English

“the only way to understand the world as something other than a tale of loss is to see it as a tale of change.”
― Daniel Mason, North Woods

“History haunts him who does not honour it.”
― Daniel Mason, North Woods

“Between 1970 and 2019 alone, nearly a third of all birds had disappeared from North America. Once, the forest would have been deafening.”
― Daniel Mason, North Woods

“It seems unfair, doesn't it? Our parents got to live their whole lives without anything like this."

"Busily building up the world that led to this.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam