Malakalshannaq > Malakalshannaq's Quotes

“There was once an invisible man who had grown tired of being unseen. It was not that he was actually invisible. It was that people had become used to not seeing him.

And if no one sees you, are you really there at all?"”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Everything is a negotiation with you, Brekker. You probably bartered your way out of the womb.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“When they bombed Hiroshima, the explosion formed a mini-supernova, so every living animal, human or plant that received direct contact with the rays from that sun was instantly turned to ash.

And what was left of the city soon followed. The long-lasting damage of nuclear radiation caused an entire city and its population to turn into powder.

When I was born, my mom says I looked around the whole hospital room with a stare that said, "This? I've done this before." She says I have old eyes.

When my Grandpa Genji died, I was only five years old, but I took my mom by the hand and told her, "Don't worry, he'll come back as a baby."

And yet, for someone who's apparently done this already, I still haven't figured anything out yet.

My knees still buckle every time I get on a stage. My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth.

But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page. So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying, hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed.

My parents named me Sarah, which is a biblical name. In the original story God told Sarah she could do something impossible and she laughed, because the first Sarah, she didn't know what to do with impossible.

And me? Well, neither do I, but I see the impossible every day. Impossible is trying to connect in this world, trying to hold onto others while things are blowing up around you, knowing that while you're speaking, they aren't just waiting for their turn to talk -- they hear you. They feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. It's what I strive for every time I open my mouth -- that impossible connection.

There's this piece of wall in Hiroshima that was completely burnt black by the radiation. But on the front step, a person who was sitting there blocked the rays from hitting the stone. The only thing left now is a permanent shadow of positive light. After the A bomb, specialists said it would take 75 years for the radiation damaged soil of Hiroshima City to ever grow anything again. But that spring, there were new buds popping up from the earth.

When I meet you, in that moment, I'm no longer a part of your future. I start quickly becoming part of your past. But in that instant, I get to share your present. And you, you get to share mine. And that is the greatest present of all.

So if you tell me I can do the impossible, I'll probably laugh at you. I don't know if I can change the world yet, because I don't know that much about it -- and I don't know that much about reincarnation either, but if you make me laugh hard enough, sometimes I forget what century I'm in.

This isn't my first time here. This isn't my last time here. These aren't the last words I'll share.

But just in case, I'm trying my hardest to get it right this time around.”
― Sarah Kay

“It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.”
― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Dear old world', she murmured, 'you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self denial, anxiety and discouragement.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“You know that your truth, the one that you hide… is the thing you are most afraid of.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“You be as angry as you need to be,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“And here was a man who lived on belief, but who sacrificed it at the first challenge, right when he needed it most.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting.”
― James V. Hart, Hook

“I don’t hold a grudge. I cradle it. I coddle it. I feed it fine cuts of meat and send it to the best schools. I nurture my grudges, Rollins.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“Little Alice fell
d
o
w
n
the hOle,
bumped her head
and bruised her soul”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“It was because she was listening so closely that she knew the exact moment when Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, the bastard of the Barrel and deadliest boy in Ketterdam, fainted.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“True terror isn’t being scared; it’s not having a choice on the matter.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“The worst part of being truly alone is you think about all the times you wished that everyone would just leave you be. Then they do, and you are left being, and you turn out to be terrible company.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or the booze or God they though would save them. Adults think they are wielding power, but really power is wielding them.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“You just, like, hate yourself? You hate being yourself?"
"There's no self to hate. It's like, when I look into myself, there's no actual me—just a bunch of thoughts and behaviors and circumstances. And a lot of them just don't feel like they're mine. They're not things I want to think or do or whatever. And when I do look for the, like, Real Me, I never find it. It's like those nesting dolls, you know? The ones that are hollow, and then when you open them up, there's a smaller doll inside, and you keep opening hollow dolls until eventually you get to the smallest one, and it's solid all the way through. But with me, I don't think there is one that is solid. They just keep getting smaller.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Good-night, my-" He stopped, bit his lip, and abruptly left me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.

When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.

It’s like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable.”
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

“Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are”
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

“Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond.”
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

“In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis.”
― Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

“It goes without saying that a civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.”
― Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion