Estee > Estee's Quotes

“And I think of Emily Dickinson, and my favorite poem about death, and the line that reads "I could not see to see." This is the line Ms. Sylvia copied onto the board in her beautiful cursive, which spirals away like blindweed tendrils, and then she asked the class what it might mean. I didn't even have to think about it. I just knew. To see to see, which is not exactly what Dickinson wrote, means knowing how to look. How to look to understand. How to look without your eyes. And to die, is not to see at all. Of course, I didn't actually say this out loud.”
― Sarah Elizabeth Schrantz

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I am haunted by humans.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Don't punish yourself,' she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Nothing
would be
easier without
you,
because you
are
everything,
all of it-
sprinkles, quarks, giant
donuts, eggs sunny-side up-
you
are the ever-expanding
universe
to me.”
― Kate DiCamillo, Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

“I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. The pain is like an axe that chops my heart. ”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity; it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“The essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Sometimes you think you know things, know things very deeply, only to realize you don’t know a damn thing.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.”
― Emma Donoghue, Room

“Life is very hard. The only people who really live are those who are harder than life itself.”
― Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero

“They look like confused strangers standing in a lopsided triangle, like the one Ashley made out of yarn. It makes me wonder what makes anybody family. I think that maybe for some people, family is just the people you're standing next to when awful things happen”
― Meg Hastonton

“Deep in her soul, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon. She did not know what this chance event would be, what wind would drive it to her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it was a longboat or a three-decked vessel, loaded with anguish or filled with happiness up to the portholes. But each morning, when she awoke, she hoped it would arrive that day, and she would listen to every sound, spring to her feet, feel surprised that it had not come; then at sunset, always more sorrowful, she would wish the next day were already there.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“our culture has the expectation that the memories of a happy childhood will somehow ground you and prepare you for adult life. But what about the memories that cut, that wound, that won't heal?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, The Impossible Knife of Memory

“When I finish a book, I find I cannot start another one immediately. Each book needs time to settle in my mind, to be digested like a meal of many courses. It seems disrespectful to the characters to move on too quickly—after all, I have spent hours in their company, learnt their histories, looked on at significant moments of their lives.”
― Anna Lyndsey, Girl in the Dark

“Friendship plants itself as a small unobtrusive seed; over time, it grows thick roots that wrap around your heart. When a love affair ends, the tree is torn out quickly, the operation painful but clean. Friendship withers quietly, there is always hope of revival. Only after time has passed do you recognise that it is dead, and you are left, for years afterwards, pulling dry brown fibres from your chest.”
― Anna Lyndsey, Girl in the Dark

“Animals in zoos and prisoners sleep many hours a day. Like them I have become a devotee, a voluptuary of sleep, a connoisseur of its intense, uncharted pleasures. Sleep slips the chains of this life, snaps the intimate fetters of my skin, sets me free to travel the wild landscapes of the ungoverned mind.”
― Anna Lyndsey

“There is greatness in doing something you hate for the sake of someone you love.”
― Shmuley Boteach

“Very few of us are what we seem.”
― Agatha Christie, The Man in the Mist

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”
― Philippe Ariès

“Shut your eyes and see.”
― James Joyce

“A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.”
― Jean Genet

“A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.”
― Charles H. Spurgeon

“You know they used to use nails," he says. "In the old days. Poor folks still do. Not the best idea, a nail in a coffin." Bowman says nothing, but in his mind, he asks, Coffin? The man nods, smiling. He picks up something now, and shows it to Bowman, for inspection. It is a long brass screw. "That's better," he says. "Better than a nail. Notice anything about it?" Bowman shakes his head. "The screw runs widdershins. Back to front. 'Gainst the clock. All the other screws in the world turn the other way to this one. But coffin screws are different. " Bowman forms a word in his mind. Why? The coffin maker smiles. "To stop them from coming back, of course.”
― Marcus Sedgwick

“to be remembered in the heart of a loved one is to live forever”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Ghosts of Heaven

“You will never find it," his ghost says. "What?" "What you are looking for. You want to go back to the start. You want to go back to where you began. You want to find the happiness you once had. But you can never get there, because even if you somehow found it, you yourself would be different. You would have changed, from your journey alone, from the passing of time, if nothing else. You can never make it back to where you began, you can only ever climb another turn of the spiral stair. Forever.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, The Ghosts of Heaven

“But these were days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“one thing I've learner," she said, "you have to talk about these things while they're fresh. Or you'll never talk about them. I'm going to teach you how to talk about them, because it's going to get harder and harder the longer you wait, and it's going to fester inside you, and you're always going to think you're to blame. You'll be wrong, of course, but you'll always think it.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“You’ll find your own way to discuss what happened to you. You’ll have to, if you ever want to be close to anyone. But your life—no matter what you think, you have nothing to be ashamed of, and none of it has been your fault. Will you remember that?”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life