Brittany Taft > Brittany's Quotes

“Perhaps all a Tsaritsa is is a beautiful cold girl in the snow, looking down at someone wretched, and not yielding.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“He wanted to care, he wanted to care so badly, but there was this gap between what he felt and what he wanted to feel, a space where something important had been carved out.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Do you know, Masha, how revelation comes? Like death. So sudden, though you knew all along it must occur. A revelation is always the end of something. It might even be cause for grief.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“He'll burn you down like wax if you let him. You'll think it's love, while he dines on your heart. And maybe it will be. But he's so hungry, he'll eat you all in one sitting, and you'll be in his belly, and what will you do then?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“That’s how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you’d have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Of late, she had felt coldness in herself, and though she feared it, she loved it too, for it made her strong.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Why is it safe for you and not for me?" whispered Marya Morevna.
"Because you're still a girl." The vintovnik grinned. "Girls have to obey rules. Chyerti break them.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“The absence of pain led to an absence of fear, and the absence of fear led to a disregard for consequence.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“All Eli had to do was smile. All Victor had to do was lie. Both proved frighteningly effective.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“Victor didn't want to run while Eli was busy trying to fly.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“Victor wondered about lots of things. He wondered about himself (whether he was broken, or special, or better, or worse) and about other people (whether they were all really as stupid as they seemed). He wondered about Angie - what would happen if he told her how he felt, what it would be like if she chose him. He wondered about life, and people, and science, and magic, and God, and whether he believed in any of them.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“You are the monster I claim, mein Herr.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Wintersong

“He leaned close and breathed in her ear, "You will be the lady dearest and most dreadful."

For a moment, she almost felt the wind of the Great Forest in her hair.”
― Rosamund Hodge, Crimson Bound

“The same wolfish greed beats in your heart: to have what you will, and kill for it.”
― Rosamund Hodge, Crimson Bound

“I savor bitterness--it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived. You, too, must learn to prefer it. After all, when all else is gone, you may still have bitterness in abundance.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“How long your hair has grown. You could strangle a man in it.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“It’s a profoundly strange feeling, to stumble across someone whose desires are shaped so closely to your own, like reaching toward your reflection in a mirror and finding warm flesh under your fingertips. If you should ever be lucky enough to find that magical, fearful symmetry, I hope you’re brave enough to grab it with both hands and not let go.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

“How fitting, that the most terrifying time in my life should require me to do what I do best: escape into a book.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January