Mel Reviews > Mel's Quotes

“I embrace the label of bad feminist because I am human. I am messy. I’m not trying to be an example. I am not trying to be perfect. I am not trying to say I have all the answers. I am not trying to say I’m right. I am just trying—trying to support what I believe in, trying to do some good in this world, trying to make some noise with my writing while also being myself.”
― Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”
― Anatole France, The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

“If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”
― Anatole France

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.”
― Anatole France

“If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If youre a pretender com sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!”
― Shel Silverstein

“Acceptance. Embrace the suck.”
― Tarryn Fisher, Mud Vein

“It’s your darkness that pulls me in. Your mud vein. But sometimes having a mud vein will kill you.”
― Tarryn Fisher, Mud Vein

“Tell him to seek the stars and he will kill himself with climbing.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

“Love is not a candle burning down. Life is. And love and life are not the same or else Love, having choice, nobody would ever die.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966

“Life is too short to hide your wrongs. So I hide myself instead.”
― Tarryn Fisher, Mud Vein

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

“Poseidon,' said Chiron. 'Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail, Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“heal the roots, to see the tree grow vibrant.”
― Matthew Edward Hall, San Mateo: Proof of The Divine

“I remember you"
Three words, large enough to tip the world.
I remember you.”
― V.E Schwab

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Power comes with a price. It's a burden. It demands sacrifice.”
― Drew Karpyshyn, Children of Fire

“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.”
― Winston S. Churchill, Painting As a Pastime

“If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extrovert.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“make sure you choose work that makes you happy”
― Randy Susan Meyers, The Widow of Wall Street

“After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we’ve just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“los libros no distinguen entre lectores, a un libro no le importa quién eres, qué haces, a qué te dedicas, si tienes o no una carrera profesional, tu edad. Está ahí para ti, para ser tu compañero en la soledad, el motivo de tus sonrisas, tu abrazo en momentos de tristeza, tu impulso, tu refugio. Un libro es tu aliado incondicional.”
― Maura Gómez,

“I’ll tell you what is convenient,” he said after a moment. “To sleep until noon and have someone bring you your breakfast on a tray. To cancel an appointment at the very last minute. To keep a carriage waiting at the door of one party, so that on a moment’s notice it can whisk you away to another. To sidestep marriage in your youth and put off having children altogether. These are the greatest of conveniences, Anushka—and at one time, I had them all. But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“Passion is...it's fire. And fire is great, man. But we're made of water. Water is how we keep living. Water is what we need to survive.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“I can’t lose the thing I’ve held onto for so long, you know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story, you know? I really, really need it to be that.”
“I know,” she says.
“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it”? I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“But loving somebody isn't perfection and good times and laughing and making love. Love is forgiveness and patience and faith and every once in a while, it's a gut punch. That's why it's a dangerous thing, when you go loving the wrong person. When you love somebody who doesn't deserve it. You have to be with someone that deserves your faith and you have to be deserving of someone else's. It's sacred.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“Women on daytime murder shows are always strangled or stabbed or chopped up for no reason at all, except that they're women, I guess, and to some men that means they deserve it. Women are lucky to get shot, really. I'd rather be shot than strangled. Thank you, Son of Sam, you were uncharacteristically good to us.”
― Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

“I wish someone had told me that love isn’t torture. Because I thought love was this thing that was supposed to tear you in two and leave you heartbroken and make your heart race in the worst way. I thought love was bombs and tears and blood. I did not know that it was supposed to make you lighter, not heavier. I didn’t know it was supposed to take only the kind of work that makes you softer. I thought love was war. I didn’t know it was supposed to… I didn’t know it was supposed to be peace.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six