Ryu > Ryu's Quotes

“Some small ones learn to stitch together a Coat of Scowls or a Scarf of Jokes to hide their Hearts. Some hammer up a Fort of Books to protect theirs.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland

“Why should I care about you first kiss,' he said. 'You can kiss anyone you like. But sometimes if you wanted to kiss me, that would be all right, too.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“Prejudice is a product of ignorance that hides behind barriers of tradition.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Fourth Bear

“She did not know yet how sometimes people keep parts of themselves hidden and secret, sometimes wicked and unkind parts, but often brave or wild or colorful parts, cunning or powerful or even marvelous, beautiful parts, just locked up away at the bottom of their hearts. They do this because they are afraid of the world and of being stared at, or relied upon to do feats of bravery or boldness. And all of those brave and wild and cunning and marvelous and beautiful parts they hid away and left in the dark to grow strange mushrooms—and yes, sometimes those wicked and unkind parts, too—end up in their shadow.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“... but as has been said, September read often, and liked it best when words did not pretend to be simple, but put on their full armor and rode out with colors flying.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“War is not for winning, Masha," sighed Koschei, reading the tracks of supply lines, of pincer strategies, over her shoulder. "It is for surviving.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I'm not lost, because I haven't any idea where to go that I might get lost on the way to. I'd like to get lost, because then I'd know where I was going, you see.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“Readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because you need just as badly to forgive them, for a heart can grab hold of old wounds and go sour as milk over them.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“A book is a door, you know. Always and forever. A book is a door into another place and another heart and another world.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Of course not. No one is chosen. Not ever. Not in the real world. You chose to climb out of your window and ride on a leopard. You chose to get a witch’s Spoon back, and to make friends with a wyvern. You chose to trade your shadow for a child’s life. You chose not to let the Marquess hurt your friend--you chose to smash her cages! You chose to face your own Death, not to balk at a great sea to cross and no ship to cross it in. And twice now you have chosen not to go home when you might have, if only you abandoned your friends. You are not the chosen one, September. Fairyland did not choose you--you chose yourself. You could have had a lovely holiday in Fairyland and never met the Marquess, never worried yourself with local politics, had a romp with a few brownies and gone home with enough memories for a lifetime’s worth of novels. But you didn’t. You chose. You chose it all. Just like you chose your path on the beach: to lose your heart is not a path for the faint and fainting.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“A library is never complete. That’s the joy of it. We are always seeking one more book to add to our collection.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“A silent Library is a sad Library. A Library without patrons on whom to pile books and tales and knowing and magazines full of up-to-the-minute politickal fashions and atlases and plays in pentameter! A Library should be full of exclamations! Shouts of delight and horror as the wonders of the world are discovered or the lies of the heavens are uncovered or the wild adventures of devil-knows-who sent romping out of the pages. A Library should be full of now-just-a-minutes and that-can't-be-rights and scientifick folk running skelter to prove somebody wrong. It should positively vibrate with laughing at comedies and sobbing at tragedies, it should echo with gasps as decent ladies glimpse indecent things and indecent ladies stumble upon secret and scandalous decencies! A Library should not shush; it should roar!”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two

“I have all the books I could need, and what more could I need than books?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland - For a Little While

“I wish you the best that can be hoped for, and no worse than can be expected.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

“You can never be overdressed or overeducated.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
― St. Augustine

“The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”
― Thomas Paine, A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North America

“The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.”
― Plutarch

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”
― Albert Einstein

“Try not to have a good time...this is supposed to be educational.”
― Charles Schultz

“Saying something is 'politically correct' is often a way of dismissing the voices of the oppressed.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“What society judged was not the severity of the disease but the social acceptability of the individuals affected with it…”
― Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

“Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear

“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”
― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman

“Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.”
― Kofi Annan