kel > kel's Quotes

“And he did not want to be loved as a second choice, as a surrender. He had spent his whole life not being loved at all, and he had thought being loved enough would satisfy him. It would not. He did not want to be loved enough. He wanted to be loved overwhelmingly. (...) He had never been chosen, so he had never had a chance to know this about himself before now: he wanted to be chosen first.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“I am not winning any arguments because I know how to hurt someone. How does that prove that you're right? How does being stronger or more vicious prove anything, except that all this talk about honor is stupid? Where's the honor in being better at hurting somebody? Telling me I have to do this is insulting, as if I can't win any other way. As if I can't win in a better way.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Violence was like that, Elliot had noticed. One move toward it and all at once everything was allowed: anyone could be hurt, out of a mix of pride and anger and stupid disregard for the fact that you could be hurt as easily as someone else.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“All over the gray facade of his father's house in scarlet letters he wrote: ELLIOT SCHAFER. He almost added: "was here" but did not, partly because it was a little too cliched vandal for him, and partly because it did not encompass all he wanted to say: was here, is no longer here, is somewhere almost unimaginably different, is all right.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“I do not know if you are not interested, or protecting yourself, but you cannot guard yourself against the whole world. You only succeed in placing a barrier between yourself from the world." He hesitated. "I know that from personal experience.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Why is language in the Borderlands so weird? Some of it’s modern, and some of it’s medieval, and I guess that makes sense with the influx of a certain amount of new blood to the training camp every year, but how do some words and phrases transfer, while others don’t? Why do you know the word ‘jerk’ and not the word ‘bisexual’?”
“I guess people say the first word more,” said Luke.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“He could change something, maybe, even if he could not change enough.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“The code of not telling tales was the usual stuff where stronger people tried to impose their rules on weaker people so they could get away with everything.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“It wasn't her fault if Elliot had expressed his feelings wrong. He always did that, as if life were a dance where everybody else knew the moves but Elliot was constantly and fatally out of step.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“What, you people expect women to tear apart their bodies and then go to all the bother of raising the children? That takes years, you know,” Serene remarked sternly. “The women’s labour is brief and agonizing, and the man’s is long and arduous. This seems only just. What on earth are men contributing to their children’s lives in the human world? Why would any human woman agree to have a child?” “The more she talks the more sense it all makes,” said Elliot. “Has anyone else discovered that?”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“Does it get easier? Elliot thought, looking at her still pale face. Or is it just that you shut doors in your own heart and never open them again for fear of what is behind them?”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“I don't like wizard stories all that much. Stories about witches are better, because witches are morally ambiguous and traditionally disempowered.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“And it wasn’t her fault if Elliot had expressed his feelings wrong. He always did that, as if life were a dance where everybody else knew the moves but Elliot was constantly and fatally out of step.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“He had been wishing for love his whole life, and if he’d had just one wish that wish would have been her. He was not sure how it had happened, or why: but the wish granted, he had to prove he could deserve it. He did not know how to be grateful enough.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands

“The only possible response to someone telling you that they wanted to be friends, or that you were a great friend, was gratitude. Elliot had been friendless long enough that he knew friendship was a prize in itself”
― Sarah Rees Brennan, In Other Lands