Ange Lee > Ange's Quotes

“This is the story of how I never stopped running. This is the story of how, when the wolves knocked, I met them at the door and I became the beast, instead.”
― Ashe Vernon, Belly of the Beast

“When he says he doesn’t love you anymore, roll your shoulders back and look him in the eye even when it feels like your ribs are breaking inward; like spider legs.

When he digs up old aches that he swore he forgave you for, smile and ask him why he didn’t leave you sooner.

Ignore the way the words feel like sandpaper running all the way up your throat to your mouth.

When he blames you for mistakes that wear his face, do not scream.

Do not cry.

Tell him that there are boys who would be proud to say they’d love you.

Tell him that in two years you won’t even remember his name and don’t let him see the way you can taste your own lie.

When he leaves, ignore the howling in your blood and do not get up after him. Not even to lock the door.

Do not, do not, DO NOT. Smell his shirts when you box them up to give them back. Not one.

Swear off dating when you realize you’re chasing ghosts that wear his smile.

It’s okay to cry over him. It’s even okay to forgive him. But do not go back to him if he did not know how to love you the first time. He won’t know how to do it the next.”
― Ashe Vernon

“I am carving myself into a shape
that no one will recognize
because it is better being the marble
than the monster.”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight

“To whoever loves me next,

I’m sorry if I’m afraid of you
or if days of flirting turn to
radio silence, without warning.

I’m sorry if I make you say the words
over and over and over until I believe them.
(I’m sorry if I don’t believe them.)

I will probably spend more time
worrying about losing you than I spend
trying to keep you.
Trouble is,
every single time I’ve ever thought
something was too good to be true–
I’ve been right.

Understand,
I will know how to be vulnerable with you,
but I won’t know how not to regret it.
And I have no idea how deep we’ll be
into this relationship before I admit
I’ve never done this before.
Not really.
Not in any way that counts.

Before I admit that I know
how to put my body inside someone else’s
but not how to make it beautiful.

I probably won’t be easy to love.
Too many people loved me badly,
I’m not sure I know how
to do it right.”
― Ashe Vernon

“This is a story of survival.
It is your story,
even when you feel like that word
does not belong to you.”
― Ashe Vernon, Wrong Side of a Fistfight

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”
― Margaret Atwood

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”
― 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

“Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

“i am learning to sharpen my teeth and rule kingdoms, instead.”
― Arlen C., Unmythologize

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams

“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
― E.E. Cummings

“She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood.

She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.”
― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
― Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse

“to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”
― William Faulkner, The Wild Palms

“grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us

grief is a house that disappears
each time someone knocks at the door
or rings the bell
a house that blows into the air
at the slightest gust
that buries itself deep in the ground
while everyone is sleeping

grief is a house where no one can protect you
where the younger sister
will grow older than the older one
where the doors
no longer let you in
or out”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“The Uses Of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.”
― Mary Oliver, Thirst

“A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you

is that a fact or a weapon?”
― Margaret Atwood

“Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing
inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”
― Naomi Shihab Nye, Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

“I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Together they’d run away. Together they could find a place to call home. Together they’d finally form their own constellation and never break apart again. He would be her starlight again and she his sun.”
― Hella Grichi, Fae Visions of the Mediterranean

“I know who you are. I love you. I love everything about you that hurts.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“Lips that have tasted the salt of tears always give the sweetest kiss.”
― C.J. Carlyon, The Cherry House

“But as the years passed, he missed her more, not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking.”
― Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

“It’s a difficult thing having a heart made of glass; people don’t seem to realize how easily it shatters. How often I’ve swept up the pieces and carefully glued them back together.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year

“She's fire...but she will not burn you. She knows all too well how it feels to live with ashes.”
― Alfa