JOY > JOY's Quotes

“I may think of you softly from time to time. But I’ll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“His eyes could see inside you, could see how weak and worthless and ugly you were down deep. When he looked at you, you knew.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, 5-Book Boxed Set: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons

“It is my look they will flinch from now, my frown that they must fear.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.”
― Vincent Van Gogh

“It is difficult—it is very difficult, to befriend where you wish to consume, to find those who, when they ask Do I have you still, when they end a letter with Yours, mean it in any substantive way.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I don't get why a person's smile is considered attractive. When someone smiles, they're showing their skeleton.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“To be a monster is to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse: both shelter and warning at once.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us

grief is a house that disappears
each time someone knocks at the door
or rings the bell
a house that blows into the air
at the slightest gust
that buries itself deep in the ground
while everyone is sleeping

grief is a house where no one can protect you
where the younger sister
will grow older than the older one
where the doors
no longer let you in
or out”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“I’ve become passive. I don’t invent, I don’t yearn. I manage, I cope.”
― Susan Sontag

“When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain -
long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“Kill me," he rasped at Clear Sky. "Kill me and live with the memory. Then tell the stars that you won.”
― Erin Hunter, The First Battle

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You'll never see, but you will know. I'll be all the poets, I'll kill them all and take each one's place in turn, and every time love's written in all the strands it will be to you.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I want to be a body for you. I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious—I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in ten years or a thousand. Flowers grow far away on a planet they’ll call Cephalus, and these flowers bloom once a century, when the living star and its black-hole binary enter conjunction.I want to fix you a bouquet of them, gathered across eight hundred thousand years, so you can draw our whole engagement in a single breath, all the ages we’ve shaped together.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“Have you ever had a hunger that whetted itself on what you fed it, sharpened so keen and bright that it might split you open, break a new thing out?
Sometimes I think that's what I have instead of friends.”
― Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“How long will it feel like burning, said the child trying to be kind.”
― Anne Carson, Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“The only good human being is a dead one.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Most days I am a museum of things I want to forget.”
― E.E. Scott

“We were together. I forget the rest.”
― Walt Whitman

“I was waiting for
something extraordinary to
happen

but as the years wasted on
nothing ever did unless I
caused it.”
― Charles Bukowski, TWELVE FLYING MONKEYS WHO WON'T COPULATE PROPERLY

“I wait every year for summer, and it is usually good, but it is never as good as that summer I am always waiting for.”
― Martha Gellhorn

“I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something's not right about what I'm doing but I'm still doing it-- living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling.
The enormity of my desire disgusts me.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“I think we deserve

a soft epilogue, my love.

We are good people

and we’ve suffered enough.”
― Nikka Ursula

“I was very young when I was cracked open.

Some things you should let go of
Others you shouldn't
Views differ as to which

I keep hold of everything, just in case”
― Emily Berry, Dear Boy

“I have this strange feeling that I'm not myself anymore. It's hard to put into words, but I guess it's like I was fast asleep, and someone came, disassembled me, and hurriedly put me back together again. That sort of feeling.”
― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

“To love someone is firstly to confess: I'm prepared to be devastated by you.”
― Billy-Ray Belcourt, A History of My Brief Body

“I wasn't beautiful anymore. Now I looked like what I was, a raw wound.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“You said I killed you-haunt me, then! [...] Be with me always-take any form-drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!”
― Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights