Isca > Isca's Quotes

“And that’s part of our trouble. Thinking things are inevitable. Not believing change is possible.”
― Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping

“Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“Whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change - and change is what we're chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others' opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what YOU will change. And then get started.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“Age is irrelevant in grief; at issue is not how old he was but how loved.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“Bermimpilah, karena Tuhan akan memeluk mimpi-mimpi itu.”
― Andrea Hirata, Sang Pemimpi

“Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with soaking joy. But sometimes, under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots, keeping itself alive.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“People say they 'find' love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. And [he] found a certain love with [her], a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else, was irreplaceable.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“Yes, frosting. The final defense of the dying.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Well, you know what they say. The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings,” she said.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

“They will not use my tears for their entertainment.”
― Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping

“Fire is catching, she’d say, but if this one burns down the arena, I say good riddance.”
― Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping

“but the walls of a person’s heart are not impregnable, not if they have ever known love.”
― Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping

“For the rest of my life, I will live with my hands outstretched for things that are no longer there.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“I wince now at the words I said in the past to grieving friends. "Find peace in your memories," I used to say. To have love snatched from you, especially unexpectedly, and then to be told to turn to memories. Rather than succor, my memories bring eloquent stabs of pain that say, "This is what you will never again have.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“A friend sends me a line from my novel: 'Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.' How odd to find it so exquisitely painful to read my own words.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun,”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“And as humans, we’re by-products of our upbringings, victims of our lackluster educational systems, and choosers of our behaviors. In short, the reduction of women to something less than men, and the elevation of men to something more than women, is not biological: it’s cultural. And it starts with two words: pink and blue. Everything skyrockets out of control from there.” Speaking”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“No surprise. Idiots make it into every company. They tend to interview well.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“Because while stupid people may not know they’re stupid because they’re stupid, surely unattractive people must know they’re unattractive because of mirrors.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“some things needed to stay in the past because the past was the only place they made sense.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“Hiduplah Untuk Memberi yang Sebanyak-banyaknya, Bukan untuk Menerima yang Sebanyak-banyaknya. (Pak Harfan)”
― Andrea Hirata, Laskar Pelangi

“Demikianlah karnaval kami setiap tahun. Tak melambangkan cita-cita. Mungkin karena kami tak berani bercita-cita.”
― Andrea Hirata, Laskar Pelangi

“Learn everything. Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.” Hansu never told him to study, but rather to learn, and it occurred to Noa that there was a marked difference. Learning was like playing, not labor.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“It was not Hansu that she missed, or even Isak. What she was seeing again in her dreams was her youth, her beginning, and her wishes--so this is how she became a woman.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko