viola ✨ > viola's Quotes

“Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . what's wrong. I want to belong. I'm like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm frozen.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

“You make me lovely, and it’s so lovely to be lovely to the one I love.…”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The thing I realize is, that it's not what you take, it's what you leave.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The problem with people is they forget that most of the time it's the small things that count.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“We are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I know life well enough to know you can’t count on things staying around or standing still, no matter how much you want them to. You can’t stop people from dying. You can’t stop them from going away. You can’t stop yourself from going away either. I know myself well enough to know that no one else can keep you awake or keep you from sleeping.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“No more winter at all. Finch, you brought me spring.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I do my best thinking at night when everyone else is sleeping. No interruptions. No noise. I like the feeling of being awake when no one else is.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I am on the highest branch.
We are written in paint.
I believe in signs.
The glow of Ultraviolet.
A lake. A prayer. It's so lovely to be lovely in Private.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Stars in the sky, stars on the ground. It’s hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins. I feel the need to say something grand and poetic, but the only thing I come up with is “It’s lovely.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“You deserve better. I can’t promise you I’ll stay around, not because I don’t want to. It’s hard to explain. I’m a fuckup. I’m broken, and no one can fix it. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. I can’t love anyone because it’s not fair to anyone who loves me back. I’ll never hurt you, not like I want to hurt Roamer. But I can’t promise I won’t pick you apart, piece by piece, until you’re in a thousand pieces, just like me. You should know what you’re getting into before getting involved.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Listen, I’m the freak. I’m the weirdo. I’m the troublemaker. I start fights. I let people down. Don’t make Finch mad, whatever you do. Oh, there he goes again, in one of his moods. Moody Finch. Angry Finch. Unpredictable Finch. Crazy Finch. But I’m not a compilation of symptoms. Not a casualty of shitty parents and an even shittier chemical makeup. Not a problem. Not a diagnosis. Not an illness. Not something to be rescued. I’m a person.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space.
The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again.
So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

“But I bring it up to let you know that this is the way I feel right now. Like Pluto and Jupiter are aligned with the earth and I’m floating.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I should be happy, but instead I feel nothing. I feel a lot of nothing these days. I've cried a few times, but mostly I'm empty, as if whatever makes me feel and hurt and laugh and love has been surgically removed, leaving me hollowed out like a shell.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“All I know is what I wonder: Which of my feelings are real? Which of the mes is me? There is only one me I’ve ever really liked, and he was good and awake as long as he could be.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I have this feeling, like I'm waiting for something. But I have no idea what.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I am rooted, but I flow. All gold, flowing …”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I am in pieces.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Drive anywhere and everywhere, even when there’s nowhere to go. (Note: There’s always somewhere to go.)”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“He was still alive.
Which was the worst thing that could have happened.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“You must speak the truth and you must speak it now, Conor O'Malley. Say it. You must.

Conor shook his head again, his mouth clamped shut tight, but he could feel a burning in his chest, like a fire someone had lit there, a miniature sun, blazing away and burning him from the inside.

“It'll kill me if I do,” he gasped.

It will kill you if you do not, the monster said. You must say it.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“One hundred and fifty years ago, the monster began, this country had become a place of industry. Factories grew on the landscape like weeds. Trees fell, fields were up-ended, rivers blackened. The sky choked on smoke and ash, and the people did, too, spending their days coughing and itching, their eyes turned forever toward the ground. Villages grew into town, towns into cities. And people began to live on the earth rather than within it.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls