Ruby Thornburg > Ruby's Quotes

“Some people can't see softness without wanting to hurt it”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“But maybe you should question the people who taught you this version of God. Because it's not doing you any favors.”
― Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

“There’s an old saying: mothers raise their daughters and love their sons.”
― Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

“Even Einstein wasn’t an atheist,” he says. “He talked about God all the time. Now, he didn’t believe in a god that was concerned with human behavior, which is the church’s obsession and the reason it uses guilt and shame to enforce Christianity.”
― Deesha Philyaw, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

“I penetrated the outer cell membrane with a nanosyringe."
"You poked it with a stick?"
"No!" I said. "Well. Yes. But it was a scientific poke with a very scientific stick.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“He puts his claw against the divider. “Fist my bump.”

“Fist-bump. It’s just ‘fist-bump.’”

“Understand.”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is 'you're safe with me'- that's intimacy.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Make them pay you what they would pay a white man.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“To love someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one's own, as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to would live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That's it, all the little secrets that make it your home.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“We deserve to have our wrongdoing represented as much as our heroism, because when we refuse wrongdoing as a possibility for a group of people, we refuse their humanity.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“Love cannot be won or lost; a relationship doesn't have a scoring system. We are partners, paired against the world. We cannot succeed if we are at odds with each other.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“When I listened to her, I understood: You have to hold out to see how your life unfolds, because it is most likely beyond what you can imagine. It is not a question of if you will survive this, but what beautiful things await you when you do. I had to believe her, because she was living proof. Then she said, Good and bad things come from the universe holding hands. Wait for the good to come.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name