Brynn > Brynn's Quotes

“Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
― Roald Dahl

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“How had the Maid, a lowly commoner, gained an audience at the royal court? How had she, an illiterate young woman from a tiny village at the very edge of the kingdom, come to know so much about the complex political situation in France, and indeed, to see into the deepest recesses of her sovereign's heart?...The answers to these questions have remained hidden, not because the mystery surrounding Joan cannot be penetrated, but because their solution is inextricably tied to the life of another woman entirely, that of Yolande of Aragon, queen of Sicily...For those who wonder after reading these pages how it is possible that the evidence of Yolande's involvement in the story of Joan of Arc has never before been adequately explored, I can only respond that there is no more effective camouflage in history than to have been born a woman.”
― Nancy Goldstone, The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc

“Sun daunting woods”
― E. L. Doctrow

“You're probably scare, and nervous, and just about ready to pee your pants. But don't run from your fear. Embrace it! Because believe me, the best things in life are worth fighting for.”
― Victoria Jamieson, Roller Girl

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Home is about the earth. Whether the earth open up to you. Whether it pull you so close the space between you and it melt and y'all one and it beats like your heart.”
― Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing

“His mother is wishing her boy would come home."

Lots of mothers wishing that these days,
while their sons walk to California,
where rain comes,
and the color green doesn't seem like such a miracle,
and hope rises daily, like sap in a stem.”
― Karen Hesse, Out of the Dust

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

“Life does not belong to you. It is the apartment you rent. Love without fear, for love is an airplane that carries you to new lands. There is a universe in silence. A tunnel to peace in a scream. Get a good night's sleep. Laugh when you can. You are more magical than you know. Take your advice from the elderly and children. None of it as crucial as you think, but that makes it no less vital. Our lives go on, and on. Look for the breadcrumbs.”
― Marisha Pessl, Neverworld Wake

“What's past is prologue.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“After I heard, I switched the radio to music and turned it up as load as it would go and let myself cry...You've likely never seen me like that. Almost no one has. It has never earned me anything to share my darker self with other people. The only anger I ever expose to the world is through implication, by suggesting that I'm on the brink of no longer being able to contain my fury. That is what a woman's strength looks like when it's palatable: like she is containing herself.”
― Lauren Wilkinson, American Spy

“I'm beginning to think that's kind of what being an adult is. Learning that sometimes people are a little bit wrong, but not for the reasons you think they are, and also a little bit right, and you try to take the good with the bad.”
― Christina Hammonds Reed, The Black Kids

“Like all good bookshops, Edgar's was a pocket universe, where time moved slow as clouds.”
― Melissa Albert, The Night Country

“I had a feeling I hadn't had in a very long time: of possibility. Of the world, the worlds, as a vast place, where the cost of magic wasn't always so horribly high. Where it could take the shape of something simple and beautiful. Like a perfect paper flower.”
― Melissa Albert

“He was the thing the world had suffered from most in her four billion years of existence: a stupid man with power. When the lights of the universe went out one day, standing over the plug, having pulled it despite all warnings, would be a man like Deputy Kelby.”
― Patrick Ness, Burn

“You just got days, it seemed to her. Where stuff happened or it didn't. Where planning just showed you what a fool you were to think you had any say over what your life would be.”
― Patrick Ness, Burn

“Living as a couple never means that each gets half. You must take turns at giving more than getting. It’s not the same as a bow to the other whether to dine out rather than in, or which one gets massaged that evening with oil of calendula; there are seasons in the life of a couple that function, I think, a little like a night watch. One stands guard, often for a long time, providing the serenity in which the other can work at something. Usually that something is sinewy and full of spines. One goes inside the dark place while the other one stays outside, holding up the moon.”
― Marlena De Blasi, A Thousand Days in Venice

“I don't pretend to understand these feelings, but I'm willing to let the inexplicable sit sacred.”
― Marlena De Blasi, A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance

“Love is a soft thing. It smells like woodsmoke and sounds like rain. It tastes like sugared apples. It costs nothing to give yet is more precious than a sea of diamonds.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“Sophie saw a spiral staircase as she emerged from the kitchen and quickly climbed it. She was in a dangerous man's domain and didn't know where the stairs would take her. She had no idea where to even begin looking for her heart. All she knew was that she had impossible task ahead of her, and that the only way to finish such a task was to start it.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned

“There is a small monster in my brain that controls my doubt.
The doubt itself is a stupid thing, without sense or feeling, blind and straining at the end of a long chain. The monster though, is smart. It's always watching, and when I am cmpletely sure of myself, it unchains the doubt and lets it run wild. even when I know it's coming, I can't stop it.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“There are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them?'
She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin.
"They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean." Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. "I don't know. I need help. I'm sorry. I was wrong'.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Which was what love was: unmotivated respect.”
― Toni Morrison, Paradise

“Love is divine only and difficult always.”
― Toni Morrison, Paradise