Beaton > Beaton's Quotes

“I live on the mountain of my madness, on the very top.”
― Ksenia Anske, Blue Sparrow: Tweets on Writing, Reading, and Other Creative Nonsense

“How could the soul feel so empty, yet hurt so much at the same time?”
― Jeff Inlo, Throne of Vengeance

“Maturity is for serious people. Let us be immature and have endless fun.”
― Ksenia Anske

“If you don't like the hand that fate's dealt you, fight for a new one.”
― Masashi Kishimoto

“[...] you can get anything in this world if you genuinely don't want it.”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“The mistake you make, don't you see,is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can't. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One can't put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning.”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not
money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And
though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could
remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I
bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to
be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money
suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not
itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in
iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. . . . And now
abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these
is money.

I Corinthians xiii (adapted) ”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“For money buys all virtues. Money suffereth long and is kid, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“You can be rich or deliberately refuse to be rich. You can possess money, or you can despise money; the one fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“you do not escape from money by being moneyless. On the contrary, you are the hopeless slave of money until you have enough of it to live on”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“At night all cats are grey.”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“For after all, what is there behind, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O lord, give me money, only money.”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“Vicisti, O Aspidistra!”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“the failure of hope has a name: it is called suffering.”
― Steven Erikson, The Crippled God

“Unwitnessed...is what happens when nobody survives.”
― Steven Erikson, The Crippled God

“The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.”
― Walter Mosley

“Here’s to the security guards who maybe had a degree in another land. Here’s to the manicurist who had to leave her family to come here, painting the nails, scrubbing the feet of strangers. Here’s to the janitors who don’t understand English yet work hard despite it all. Here’s to the fast food workers who work hard to see their family smile. Here’s to the laundry man at the Marriott who told me with the sparkle in his eyes how he was an engineer in Peru. Here’s to the bus driver, the Turkish Sufi who almost danced when I quoted Rumi. Here’s to the harvesters who live in fear of being deported for coming here to open the road for their future generation. Here’s to the taxi drivers from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and India who gossip amongst themselves. Here is to them waking up at 4am, calling home to hear the voices of their loved ones. Here is to their children, to the children who despite it all become artists, writers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, activists and rebels. Here’s to international money transfer. For never forgetting home. Here’s to their children who carry the heartbeats of their motherland and even in sleep, speak with pride about their fathers. Keep on.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

“I get it. Traveling halfway across the world to run into the boy you grew up with, getting back together after years apart—that’s an epic fucking fairytale. I don’t blame you for being seduced by it. I guess I just thought what we had was better. You know, because it was real.”
― Paula Stokes, The Key to Everything

“Monsters don’t get happy endings.”
― Paula Stokes, Ferocious

“Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.”
― Derek Walcott, Collected Poems, 1948-1984

“It becomes the responsibility of every man, upon realizing he lacks the truth, to seek it out.
—From The Way of Kings, postscript”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Stormlight Archive, Books 1-3: The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance, Oathbringer

“Yes, I began my journey alone, and I ended it alone.
But that does not mean that I walked alone.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry...”
― Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

“The most important words a man can say are, “I will do better.” These are not the most important words any man can say. I am a man, and they are what I needed to say.

The ancient code of the Knights Radiant says “journey before destination.” Some may call it a simple platitude, but it is far more. A journey will have pain and failure. It is not only the steps forward that we must accept. It is the stumbles. The trials. The knowledge that we will fail. That we will hurt those around us.

But if we stop, if we accept the person we are when we fall, the journey ends. That failure becomes our destination. To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.

I’m certain some will feel threatened by this record. Some few may feel liberated. Most will simply feel that it should not exist. I needed to write it anyway.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer

“If you spend enough time in the desert, you will hear it speak.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death

“Here’s something scary: If you don’t recognize yourself, then who is the one who reminds you of who you are?”
― Nnedi Okorafor

“Flawed, imperfect creatures! That's what we both are, oga! That's what we ALL are!”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death

“I was young but I hated like a middle-aged man at the end of his prime.”
― Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death