Emma > Emma's Quotes

“But what world says that [I'm wicked]? It can only be the next world. This world and I are on excellent terms.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Gibbons wondered vaguely if he was becoming a morphine addict. He had certainly dosed himself into a stupid on account of the hideous pain resulting from the nurse's insistence that he get up and sit in a chair. He rather thought that being a drug addict would interfere with his career as a police detective, but that didn't seem to matter as much as it had a little while ago.”
― Cassandra Chan, Trick of the Mind

“For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Ring around the rosie.
A pocket full of posie.
Ashes ashes, we all fall down.
Some people say that this poem is about the Black Death, the fourteenth-century plague that killed 100-million people...
Sadly, though, most experts think this is nonsense...
How can I be so sure about this rhyme when all the experts disagree?
Because I ate the kid who made it up.”
― Scott Westerfeld, The Last Days

“Sometimes I feel like I've been waiting for someone to tell me when I can be normal again,' she said. 'I keep thinking I'll get a letter. Or a call. When does it happen?'

Pete looked like he wanted to walk toward her, but then he fell back against the car. The staring contest between them for almost a minute, and finally Pete exhaled loudly.

It's okay,' he said.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Key to the Golden Firebird

“This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is just perhaps the end of the beginning.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“She poured the water, arranged some bread near enough the embers to scorch but not catch fire, and looked up at Little John. She was so accustomed to his step, to his bulk, that it took a moment to notice his face; and when she did . . . It was, she thought, rather like the moment it took to realize one had cut one's finger as one stared dumbly at the first drop of blood on the knife-blade. You know it is going to hurt quite a lot in a minute.”
― Robin McKinley, The Outlaws of Sherwood

“Little John, watching her standing next to her brother, half-glowering in the old Cecil manner and half-comforted by Robin's words, saw for a moment what it had been like for her as Will's litter sister. Some of what she was good at, and some of what she was bad at, as his pupil, came clear to him in that moment; and something else came clear to him too, but he set it aside so quickly that he allowed himself not to recognize it for what it was.”
― Robin McKinley, The Outlaws of Sherwood

“Never give us what we really want. Cut the dream into pieces and scatter them like ashes. Dole out the empty promises. Package our aspirations and sell them to us, cheaply made enough to fall apart.”
― Scott Westerfeld, So Yesterday

“I don't remember this earlier,' said Tuck.

'No?' said Robin in a neutral voice, and Tuck was too busy to pursue it, but merely bound it up and told him it was time for him, too, to try to sleep. Robin never had to tell anyone of his meeting, weaponless and with an armful of dead branches to break up for firewood, with one of Guy's men. The next day, when the burying began, no one questioned the body of another mercenary.”
― Robin McKinley, The Outlaws of Sherwood

“Singin' in the Rain was most excellent if you like movies where people burst into song and tap-dance. Which I do, though not as much as I like movies where people don't.”
― E. Lockhart, The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them

“One keeps searching for ease, she did not say, and not finding it, till the memories of no-pain seem only like daydreams.”
― Robin McKinley, The Outlaws of Sherwood

“She fell asleep, leaning on his chest, and he edged her a little off a particularly painful bruise, leaned his head back against the tree he had propped them up against, and closed his own eyes. ”
― Robin McKinley, The Outlaws of Sherwood

“Fear not death for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Oh,' she said, too bone-weary to pretend: 'I would far rather that I love you as I saw yesterday I do than that I had gone on worshiping you as I did not long since.' And she turned away hastily, and did not see that Little John would reach out to her; and half-running, went to Tuck's cottage, where she could pull on her half-dry clothes, and become a proper outlaw again. At least, she thought, fighting back tears, like this I am Cecil, with a place among friends, and a task to do. I am someone. I wonder if perhaps if I am no longer Cecil, I am no one at all.”
― Robin McKinley, The Outlaws of Sherwood

“History is not an agreed-upon fiction but what gets made in a crowded room; what is said isn't what's heard, and what's heard isn't what gets repeated. Civilization is an agreement to keep people from shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, but the moments we call historical occur when there is a fire in a crowded theater; and then we all try to remember afterward when we heard it, and if we ever really smelled smoke, and who went first and what they said. The indeterminancy is built into the emotion of the moment. The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present. If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping and the room was full.”
― Adam Gopnik

“Maybe getting around in life was nothing but map-reading. A skill that required practice. A key to unlock where you wanted to go. A legend to show where you were.”
― Justina Chen Headley, North of Beautiful

“Never confuse Motion with Action.”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

“Sometimes I see things, I think. Out of the corner of my eye, taunting me, and then it’s gone. And dreams. Such horrible dreams. What if something terrible happened to me? What if I am damaged?"
The rain is a cool kiss on my sleeve as I link my arm with hers. "We’re all damaged somehow.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Really, he thought, if you couldn't trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“The fallen autumn leaves were slick beneath Bod's feet, and the mists blurred the edges of the world. Nothing was as clean-cut as he had thought it, a few minutes before.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

“In every end, there is also a beginning.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“He's out here, somewhere, and he wants you dead,' she said. 'Him as killed your family. Us in the graveyard, we wants you to stay alive. We wants you to surprise us and disappoint us and impress us and amaze us. Come home, Bod.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“If you tell them what they want to hear, they don't bother to try to see.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I think . . . I said things to Silas. He'll be angry.'

'If he didn't care about you, you couldn't upset him,' was all she said.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“What do you want from me?" he asks.
What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.
More.”
― Melina Marchetta, Jellicoe Road

“What I'm trying to explain to my sulky little cousin is that we are doing things backwards. We are going from the end of the river to the start of the river. And endings are always sad. We are doing the sad bit first, which is wrong. Strange.”
― Mal Peet, Tamar