Tory > Tory's Quotes

“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“She understood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, anything else.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“But in the end it wasn't up to me. The bigs things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don't understand. Thoughts that aren't even true—that aren't really how we feel—but they're running through our heads anyway because they're interesting to think about.”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“For there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.”
― Herman Melville

“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“She stood there until something fell off the shelf inside her.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“I'd cut up my heart for you to wear if you wanted it.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“And I guess I realized at that moment that I really did love her. Because there was nothing to gain, and that didn't matter.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us. ”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive. The next thing you know something fine will happen to her, something marvelous, and then she will turn around and smile.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“On our honeymoon we talked and talked. We stayed in a beachfront villa, and we drank rum and lemonade and talked so much that I never even noticed what color the sea was. Whenever I need to stop and remind myself how much I once loved Andrew, I only need to think about this. That the ocean covers seven tenths of the earth's surface, and yet my husband could make me not notice it.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“Death, of course, is a refuge. It's where you go when a new name, or a mask and cape, can no longer hide you from yourself. It's where you run to when none of the principalities of your conscience will grant you asylum.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“And thus love makes fools of us all.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“I know that the hopes of this whole human world can fit inside one soul.”
― Chris Cleave, Little Bee

“I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“We shouldn't live as if [other worlds] mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“I have stolen ideas from every book I have ever read.”
― Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

“No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“But you can't get away from yourself. You can't decide not to see yourself anymore. You can't decide to turn off the noise in your head.”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“When you try rescuing someone and discover they can't be reached, why would you ever throw that back in their face?”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“Later she remembered all the hours of the afternoon as happy -- one of those uneventful times that seem at the moment only a link between past and future pleasure, but turn out to have been the pleasure itself.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night