Bee > Bee's Quotes

“Should is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“When you're unhinged, things make their way out of you that should be kept inside, and other things get in that ought to be shut out. The locks lose their powers. The guards go to sleep. The passwords fail.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it's a freshness, a plumpness of the cells, that's unearned and temporary, and that nothing can replicate. None of them was satisfied with it, however; already they were making attempts to alter themselves into some impossible, imaginary mould, plucking and pencilling away at their faces. I didn't blame them, having done the same once myself.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Fair is whatever God wants to do.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“We and the world, my children, will always be at war.
Retreat is impossible.
Arm yourselves.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“You can embark on new and steeper versions of your old sins, you know, and cry tears while doing it that are genuine as any.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“Of all facial expressions, which is the worst to have aimed at you? Wouldn't you agree it's disgust?”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone’s been missing too long.”
― Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“They were more severely infected than the men, because while men were always getting furious, they calmed down in the end; women, who appeared to be silent, acquiescent, when they were angry flew into a rage that had no end.”
― Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend

“Tears are words the mouth can't say nor can the heart bear.”
― Joshua Wisenbaker

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.”
― Richard Feynmann

“I watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory”
― Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper's Wife

“Why was it, she asked herself, that 'animals can sometimes subdue their predatory ways in only a few months, while humans, despite centuries of refinement, can quickly grow more savage than any beast.”
― Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper's Wife

“Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.”
― Markus Zusak, I Am the Messenger

“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Sometimes it's about playing a poor hand well.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.”
― Judy Garland

“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
― Herman Melville