Beth Williams > Beth's Quotes

“I don't believe in forgiveness. I think if you hurt someone, it becomes part of you both. Each of you just has to live with it and the person you hurt gets to decide if they want to give you the chance to do it again. If they do and you're a good person, you won't make the same mistakes. Just whole new ones.”
― Courtney Summers, All the Rage

“You know all the ways you can kill a girl?

God, there are so many.”
― Courtney Summers, All the Rage

“If I know anything it’s that a girl never makes a case for herself by crying. It’s just one more side of herself she’s showed can’t be trusted.”
― Courtney Summers, All the Rage

“When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“Men can imagine their own deaths, they can see them coming, and the mere though of impending death acts like an aphrodisiac. A dog or rabbit doesn't behave like that. Take birds -- in a lean season they cut down on the eggs, or they won't mate at all. They put their energy into staying alive themselves until times get better. But human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else, some new version of themselves, and live on forever.

As a species were doomed by hope, then?

You could call it hope. That, or desperation.

But we're doomed without hope, as well, said Jimmy.

Only as individuals, said Crake cheerfully.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“There's something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you're still alive.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“I am not my childhood,' Snowman says out loud.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“Her eyes widen and she shoves me back and then there's a space between us, enough to paralyze me with all of the things I could do to her next. I could raise my hand and hit her in the face or bring my knee into her stomach, take a fistful of her hair and rip it out of her skull. You don't get to do this when you're a girl, so when the opportunity for violence finally presents itself, I want all of it at once.”
― Courtney Summers, All the Rage

“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

“No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen