willowbiblio > willowbiblio's Quotes

“We are Craiglockhart's success stories. Look at us. We don't remember, we don't feel, we don't think - at least beyond the confines of what's needed to do the job. By any proper civilized standard (but what does that mean now?) we are objects of horror. But our nerves are completely steady. And we are still alive.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“Ghosts everywhere. Even the living were only ghosts in the making. You learned to ration your commitment to them. This moment in this tent already had the quality of remembered experience. Or perhaps he was simply getting old. But then, after all, in trench time he was old. A generation lasted six months, less than that on the Somme, barely twelve weeks.”
― Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“Life makes us so fragile and anesthetizes us too.”
― Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

“There is always a way out for those clever enough to find it.”
― Rick Riordan, The Titan’s Curse

“Hermes gazes up at the stars. 'My dear young cousin, if there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn't matter if they hate you, or embarrass you.”
― Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters

“The effort to ward off intrusive symptoms, though self-protective in intent, further aggravates the PTSD, for the attempt to avoid reliving the trauma too often results in a narrowing of consciousness, a withdrawal from engagement with others, and an impoverished life.”
― Judith Lewis Herman MD, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword.”
― Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth

“What matters is that you consistently work your process and do what you set out to do, each and every day.”
― Jeff Haden, The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win

“Not all powers are spectacular.' Hestid looked at me. 'Sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding.”
― Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian

“We could not save the environment and democratize the planet and feed the poor before because for so long we could not release our fear of scarcity and our need to control, so that we could give to others. We couldn't release it because we had no view of life that served as an alternative. Now we do!”
― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy - An Experiential Guide

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain't got no business doing wrong when he ain't ignorant and knows better.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn

“No one had ever loved him unconditionally like this, and that love, when he was the most undeserving he'd ever been in his life, made William feel like he was burning up.”
― Ann Napolitano, Hello Beautiful

“What Carissa came to see was that she'd hidden herself behind a facade, pretending that she wasn't yearning for more or better, all the while thinking that the mere passage of time somehow counted as progress in the relationship.”
― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands. Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface