Meg > Meg 's Quotes

“I meant it when I said I didn’t believe in love at first sight. It takes time to really, truly fall for someone. Yet I believe in a moment. A moment when you glimpse the truth within someone, and they glimpse the truth within you. In that moment, you don’t belong to yourself any longer, not completely. Part of you belongs to him; part of him belongs to you. After that, you can’t take it back, no matter how much you want to, no matter how hard you try.”
― Claudia Gray, A Thousand Pieces of You

“I would love you in any shape, in any world, with any past. Never doubt that.”
― Claudia Gray, A Thousand Pieces of You

“Now I know that grief is a whetstone that sharpens all your love, all your happiest memories, into blades that tear you apart from within.”
― Claudia Gray, A Thousand Pieces of You

“I fell in love with his unchanging soul.”
― Claudia Gray, A Thousand Pieces of You

“Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. Such moments are tests of courage, of strength.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“There are two kinds of guilt. The kind that's a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be. Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It's damaged but it's there. Don't let them take it from you.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Fear is only your enemy if you allow it to be.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“You are an ember in the ashes, Elias Veturius. You will spark and burn, ravage and destroy. You cannot change it. You cannot stop it.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“You are full, Laia. Full of life and dark and strength and spirit. You are in our dreams. You will burn, for you are an ember in the ashes.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“Fear can be good, Laia. It can keep you alive. But don't let it control you. Don't let it sow doubts within you. When the fear takes over, use the only thing more powerful, more indestructible to fight it: your spirit. Your heart.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“So long as you fight the darkness, you stand in the light.”
― Sabaa Tahir, A Torch Against the Night

“Nan always said that as long as there is life, there is hope.”
― Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes

“But you, Helene Aquilla, are no swift-burning spark. You are a torch against the night - if you dare to let yourself burn.”
― Sabaa Tahir, A Torch Against the Night

“Your emotions make you human. Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose. Don't lock them away. If you ignore them, they just get louder and angrier.”
― Sabaa Tahir, A Torch Against the Night

“Failure doesn't define you. It's what you do after you fail that determines whether you are a leader or a waste of perfectly good air.”
― Sabaa Tahir, A Torch Against the Night

“It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you.”
― Roald Dahl, The Witches

“She might even be your lovely school-teacher who is reading these words to you at this very moment. Look carefully at that teacher. Perhaps she is smiling at the absurdity of such a suggestion. Don't let that put you off. It could be part of cleverness.

I am not, of course, telling you for one second that your teacher actually is a witch. All I am saying is that she might be one. It is most unlikely. But—here comes the big "but"—not impossible.”
― Roald Dahl, The Witches

“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”
― Haim Ginott

“The world was hers for the reading.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing," thought Francie, "something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains - a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone - just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father stumbling home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more...It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life...And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“And always, there was the magic of learning things.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“Books became her friends, and there was one for every mood.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“She loved books. She loved them with her senses and her intellect. They way they looked and smelled; the way they felt in her hands; the way the pages seemed to murmur as she turned them. Everything there is in the world, she thought, is in books.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn