Beth > Beth's Quotes

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”
― Anna Quindlen

“I just hate Paris. I’m surprised more people don’t have some sort of allergic reaction.’
Thaniel decided to let it lie, whatever it was. ‘Only you could hate Paris.’
‘Thaniel, I grew up bowing to immediate family. Every random Frenchman thinks that the only proper way to say hello is indecent assault. I thoroughly hate Paris.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

“Thaniel wondered if real geisha painted themselves white so that it was harder to see how angry they must be all the time.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

“She waited by the blackboard, trying to scrape up enough of her abysmal Japanese to ask what was going on. Lectures were always in English, which was just as well, because she had the linguistic capability of a sea cucumber. As far as she could tell, the word for ‘husband’ and the word for ‘prisoner’ were identical. Half the faculty were still worried that she’d got Baron Matsumoto locked away in her attic.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

“Chivalry—Kuroda, you know when women put vegetables on a spoon and zoom it round so their kids think it's a magic butterfly or something? Chivalry is just what your mum called being a decent human being so you'd feel like a really good boy when you were nice to people. Don't say it to grown-ups.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

“You stop, and you turn back into stars. Mum says everyone’s made of stars. Is that true?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, and liked Anna even more than before. ‘All matter is forged by nuclear fusion reactions in the hearts of stars. They take hydrogen atoms, which are the littlest bits of the stuff the world is made of, and they bolt them together into bigger and bigger atoms – helium, oxygen, carbon, everything. All the atoms that make you. You’re star dust.’ She looked pleased with that. ‘And then when my atoms have finished being me, they go off back to the stars?’ ‘Some of them will be rain, some will be earth, some will float away and light up when the solar wind comes, and that makes the aurora. And like you say, some of them will find their way back into a star.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Half Life of Valery K

“He’s like wine. If you describe what he does, he seems awful, but if it’s happening to you, it’s lovely.” “There speaks an intoxicated man.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“I’d have known what that meant, when I was young,” he said, sounding strange, and sad. “Do you ever feel like your whole life happened to you in languages you don’t speak any more?” That hit me deeper than I expected. “All the time. What is it?” “I’ve forgotten,” he said, apologetic.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“Our duty is part of us, we can’t just leave it on the side of the road."
Pentheus thought about it for a little while. He had his hair over his shoulder on his sun side to keep his neck from burning, and with the gold beads threaded through into their half-crown, he looked like Helios. “I thought that too. But then... when I was in the maze, duty didn’t feel like a part of me at all. It was just chains. I suppose if you’re born in chains and so is everyone you know and you never, ever see them come off, then you would think they were part of you and something awful would happen if you found the key, but it didn’t feel awful. I felt like I could breathe.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“felt like an old candle that had sat forgotten on a shelf for years, frozen into the same lumpy awkward shape, dull with dust, but now here was the fire again, and I was softening and changing and finding I didn’t have to be that cold shape forever, and the wax was turning warm and bright again. He’d burn me away altogether before long, but it was worth it.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“I’ll tell you about rage, and a complicated man.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“Do you know about friends? It’s when you keep talking to another person for a good while but neither of you sets the other one on fire.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“When someone is that calm in a crisis, either they don’t know what’s happening, or you don’t.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“Suffering doesn't make people good or noble. A little bit gives them perspective. A lot turns them cruel, and too much - you get a murder or a marvel, and neither of those are really people any more.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“Humans are weird animals; partly we’re wild, and partly we are clockwork. Unholy devices, all of us—mechanisms bolted onto bone.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus

“What you say will matter. Negotiate. Be Persephone. If you see Death coming, say, Fantastic, you’re coming with me, and I’m Queen.”
― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus