Jude > Jude's Quotes

“A name is precious; it carries inside it a language, a history, a set of traditions, a particular way of looking at the world. Losing it meant losing my ties to all those things too.”
― Laila Lalami, The Moor's Account

“When we insert our “I” (our eye) to search deeper into someone, something, or ourselves, we are always risking a yawn or a slap, indifference or disdain. How do we even know that what interests or delights us, alarms or terrifies us, will invoke a raised eyebrow in someone else? Perhaps the craft, the art, in whatever form it takes, is our bridge. We are narrating, after all (as my father was), slivers of moments, fragments of lives, declaring our love and hatred, concerns, and ambivalence, outing our hidden selves, and hoping that what we say will make sense to others.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Best American Essays 2011

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” the novelist and essayist Joan Didion famously wrote. We also tell ourselves stories in order not to die.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Best American Essays 2011

“Whenever there is someone in a family who has long been ill, and hopelessly ill,” he wrote, “there come painful moments when all timidly, secretly, at the bottom of their hearts long for his death.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Best American Essays 2011

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside us in the absence of an empathetic witness. —Peter Levine, The Unspoken Voice”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Best American Essays 2011

“There is more than one kind of freedoms, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

“But imagining what might happen if one’s circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness. Sitting”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can't ever quite get rid of.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human or otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry and watch the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“History, like human life, is at once incredibly fast and agonizingly slow.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“I have been a drop in the air. I have been a shining star. I have been a word in a book.… I have been the string of a harp, Enchanted for a year In the foam of water. I have been a poker in the fire. I have been a tree in a covert. There is nothing in which I have not been.”
― Stephanie Burt, Don't Read Poetry: A Book About How to Read Poems

“That's enough cis men for today. I would like to cancel all cis men and go take a nap.”
― H.E. Edgmon, The Witch King

“Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It’s not because Vincent van Gogh suffered. It’s because Vincent van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that is the focus of the story we need – connection.”
― Hannah Gadsby

“Things don’t have to stay as what they started out as.”
― Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes

“The combined aromas of hot cinnamon, ground coffee, and sweet cardamom intoxicated her, and as she brewed and smiled and served and chatted, a deep contentment welled up. It was a glowing warmth she’d never experienced before, and she liked it. She liked it a great deal.”
― Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes

“I used to be an adventurer like you.”
― Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes

“Calamity." His own callused paw was swallowed by hers.
Her eyes widened.
"Hob name," he said. "You can call me Cal."
"Whichever you like best. I don't need your name to suit me.”
― Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes