Amira Yunos > Amira's Quotes

“So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall.”
― Roald Dahl

“I'm not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Books may well be the only true magic.”
― Alice Hoffman

“Despite my ghoulish reputation, I really have the heart of a small boy. I keep it in a jar on my desk.”
― Robert Bloch

“In secret we met
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.”
― George Gordon Byron

“Folks want to glow, to leave their worries and dead skin behind.”
― Terry McMillan, Getting to Happy

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.”
― Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women

“I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'Well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.”
― Maya Angelou

“A friend may be waiting behind a stranger's face.”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.”
― Maya Angelou

“Rules and school are tools for fools! I don't give two mules for rules.”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society

“The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear.”
― Daniel Defoe

“Remember the White Knight.”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society

“Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.”
― Marie Lu, Legend

“I don't know a better preparation for life than love of poetry and a good digestion”
― Zona Gale

“There’s so much more to life than finding someone who will want you, or being sad over someone who doesn’t. There’s a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself without hoping someone will fall in love with you along the way, and it doesn’t need to be painful or empty. You need to fill yourself up with love. Not anyone else. Become a whole being on your own. Go on adventures, fall asleep in the woods with friends, wander around the city at night, sit in a coffee shop on your own, write on bathroom stalls, leave notes in library books, dress up for yourself, give to others, smile a lot. Do all things with love, but don’t romanticize life like you can’t survive without it. Live for yourself and be happy on your own. It isn’t any less beautiful, I promise.”
― Emery Allen

“It doesn't matter. I have books, new books, and I can bear anything as long as there are books.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.”
― Willa Cather

“She announced her age right away, for children consider their ages every bit as important as their names.”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, The Mysterious Benedict Society

“Wonder and awe have gone out of your religions. You are prepared to accept the irrational, but not the transcendent.”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“Look at all the Eastern writers who've written great Western literature. Kazuo Ishiguro. You'd never guess that The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go were written by a Japanese guy. But I can't think of anyone who's ever done the reverse-- any Westerner who's written great Eastern literature. Well, maybe if we count Lawrence Durrell - does the Alexandria Quartet qualify as Eastern literature?"
"There is a very simple test," said Vikram. "Is it about bored, tired people having sex?"
"Yes," said the convert, surprised.
"Then it's western.”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“Conscience. Conscience is the ultimate measure of a man.”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“All translations are made up," opined Vikram, "Languages are different for a reason. You can't move ideas between them without losing something. The Arabs are the only ones who've figured this out. They have the sense to call non-Arabic versions of the Criterion interpretations, not translations.”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“I believe he is attempting to pray,” said Sheikh Bilal.

“But he isn’t clean. He hasn’t performed the ablution or checked the direction of Mecca, or begun in the correct position.”

“My dear sir,” said the sheikh. “God likes catching His servants unprepared. The boy has set down what is obviously the first plate of food he has seen in a long while in order to thank his Creator. There are few acts of piety more honest than that.”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“The act of concealment had become more powerful than what it concealed.”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“Society didn’t mind if you broke the rules; it only required you to acknowledge them.”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“Metaphors: knowledge existing in several states simultaneously and without contradiction.”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“You lent me The Golden Compass! It's full of jinni trickery, and you were angry at me when I told you that made it dangerous! Why do you get mad when religion tells you that the things you want to be true are true?

When it's true, it's not fun anymore. All right? When it's true it's scary.”
― G. Willow Wilson, Alif the Unseen

“My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere