Not Sarah Connor Writes > Not Sarah Connor's Quotes

“A memory: Isola as a toddler, sugarlump teeth, skin still smelling of milk. Hair that curled without use of an iron and sweet dresses that didn’t matter were dirtied. When she was old enough, she demanded the usual suspects at bedtime: The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast.
Even then, Mother’s contempt for non-Pardieu fairytales was obvious.
‘Hmph,’ she snorted derisively, folding up her knees to perch on Isola’s bed. ‘Listen to me, Isola. The original Beauty’s just an encouragement to young women to accept arranged marriages. What it’s really saying to impressionable girls is, “Don’t worry if your new husband is decades older than you, or ugly, or horrid. If you’re sweet and obedient enough, you might just discover he’s a prince in disguise!’’

Mother’s Most Lasting Advice
‘Never be that girl, Isola. Never pick the beast or the wolf on the off-chance he won’t devour you.”
― Allyse Near, Fairytales for Wilde Girls

“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”
― Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid

“So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Never run from anything immortal. It only attracts their attention.”
― 19, Psychomotor Agitation: A Vivisection

“The magician stood erect, menacing the attackers with demons, metamorphoses, paralyzing ailments, and secret judo holds. Molly picked up a rock.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, although I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn't say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“there never is a happy ending because nothing ever ends.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“A Clock is not time; it's numbers and springs. Pay it no mind.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Outside, the night lay coiled in the street, cobra-cold and scaled with stars.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“No," she said, answering his eyes. "I can never regret."[...]"I can sorrow," she offered gently, "but it's not the same thing.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“When you walk, you make an echo where they used to be.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world."

"She would be." Molly sniffed. "It would be the last unicorn in the world that came to Molly Grue.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“Stories wanted to be read, David's mother would whisper. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“We are not meant to know the time or the nature of our deaths (for all of us secretly hope that we may be immortal).”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“And, in the darkness, David closed his eyes as all that was lost was found again.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“I believe in those whom I love and trust.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“Now that it's time to leave, I'm not sure I wan to go.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“Stories come alive in the telling. Without a human voice to read them aloud, or a pair of wide eyes following them by flashlight beneath a blanket, they had no existence in our world. They were like seeds in the beak of a bird, waiting to fall to earth. Or the notes of a song laid out on a sheet, yearning for an instrument to bring their music into being. They lay dormant, hoping for the chance to emerge. Once someone started to read them, they could begin to change. They could take root in the imagination and transform the reader. Stories wanted to be read. They needed it. It was the reason they forced themselves from their world into ours. They wanted us to give them life.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“One may smile, and smile, and be a villain; at least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.”
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?...

'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do:
Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself?
Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?
I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou.”
― William Shakespeare