Mary > Mary's Quotes

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.”
― Douglas Adams

“I apologize for anything I might have done. I was not myself.”
“I apologize for shooting you in the leg.” said Lila. “I was myself entirely.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“Anoshe was a word for strangers in the street, and lovers between meetings, for parents and children, friends and family. It softened the blow of leaving. Eased the strain of parting. A careful nod to the certainty of today, the mystery of tomorrow. When a friend left, with little chance of seeing home, they said anoshe. When a loved one was dying, they said anoshe. When corpses were burned, bodies given back to the earth and souls to the stream, those left grieving said anoshe.

Anoshe brought solace. And hope. And the strength to let go.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light

“But these words people threw around - humans, monsters, heroes, villains - to Victor it was all just a matter of semantics. Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.”
― V.E. Schwab, Vicious

“I close my eyes and listen to the ocean.
I'm thinking about sailing, to England or maybe France. The way the wind would feel on my face and the sound of his voice screaming my name through his laughter. The waves would crash like applause. God, I remember when I used to be afraid of the ocean.”
― Hannah Moskowitz, Teeth

“I think this is the part where we stop pretending we’re not going to see each other again.”
― Hannah Moskowitz, Teeth

“If you must know, she is the one soul destined for my own, and we are going to be together forever,” he declared loftily. “That’s weird,” Luke told him. “We’re thirteen.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“You always have a choice. Don't ever imagine you don't. Whatever you do, it's a decision and you have to accept responsibility for it. That's when honor becomes more than empty words.”
― Lynn Flewelling, Stalking Darkness

“Thyon could easily imagine Ruza as a little boy on a pony. He looked at him and saw the child he'd been, and he saw the man he was--warrior, prankster, friend--and he felt a warmth that he had never felt before for any other person. It was affection, and something that frightened him, too, that he could feel in his knees and fingertips and face. It made him unsure what to do with his hands. He noticed things like knuckles and eyelashes that he didn't notice on other people, and sometimes he had to look away and pretend to be thinking of something else.”
― Laini Taylor, Muse of Nightmares

“His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he'd let them overflow and now there wasn't a damn place in the ocean that wouldn't catch fire if he dropped a match.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“He was a book, and he was holding his final pages, and he wanted to get to the end to find out how it went, and he didn't want it to be over.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“When Adam kissed him, it was every mile per hour Ronan had ever gone over the speed limit. It was every window-down, goose-bumps-on-skin, teeth-chattering-cold night drive. It was Adam’s ribs under Ronan’s hands and Adam’s mouth on his mouth, again and again and again. It was stubble on his lips and Ronan having to stop, to get his breath, to restart his heart. They were both hungry animals, but Adam had been starving for far longer.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“I don't care to be pretty," Blue shot back hotly, "I care to look on the outside like I look on the inside.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“All those stories must have ended this same way, with someone tired going home from a field full of death, but no one ever sang this part.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“Ninety percent of all problems are caused by people being assholes.”
“What causes the other ten percent?” asked Kizzy.
“Natural disasters,” said Nib.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us. You think every soldier who picked up a cutter gun was a bad person? No. She was just doing what the soldier next to her was doing, who was doing what the soldier next to her was doing, and so on and so on. And I bet most of them — not all, but most — who made it through the war spent a long time after trying to understand what they’d done. Wondering how they ever could have done it in the first place. Wondering when killing became so comfortable.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“So, imagine we’re all born with a set of feelings. Some are broader or deeper than others, but for everyone, there’s that ground floor, a bottom crust of the pie. That’s the maximum depth of feeling you’ve ever experienced. And then, the worst thing happens to you. The very worst thing that could have happened. The thing you had nightmares about as a child, and you thought, it’s all right because that thing will happen to me when I’m older and wiser, and I’ll have felt so many feelings by then that this one worst feeling, the worst possible feeling, won’t seem so terrible.

“But it happens to you when you’re young. It happens when your brain isn’t even fully done cooking—when you’ve barely experienced anything, really. The worst thing is one of the first big things that ever happens to you in your life. It happens to you, and it goes all the way down to the bottom of what you know how to feel, and it rips it open and carves out this chasm down below to make room. And because you were so young, and because it was one of the first big things to happen in your life, you’ll always carry it inside you. Every time something terrible happens to you from then on, it doesn’t just stop at the bottom —it goes all the way down.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“I was having an emotion, and I hate that.”
― Martha Wells, Exit Strategy