Grace Downey > Grace's Quotes

“He will not kill me. He does not get to make me a statistic.”
― Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow

“But I had to dream. I had to hope. Even if it made me the fool of this particular tale.”
― C. Robert Cargill, Sea of Rust

“I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“The system does not work for you, was never intended to work for you, but as an act of magnanimity on our part, you may choose the degree to which it works against you.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Darling," he said, "I have only begun to love you.”
― Evie Dunmore, Bringing Down the Duke

“There will always be men like you,” Rao agreed, pinning him harder. It was easy. “But they will not be you. That’s enough for me.”
― Tasha Suri, The Lotus Empire

“You are hierarchical. That’s the older and more entrenched characteristic. We saw it in your closest animal relatives and in your most distant ones. It’s a terrestrial characteristic. When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all …” The rattling sounded again. “That was like ignoring cancer. I think your people did not realize what a dangerous thing they were doing.”
― Octavia E. Butler, Dawn

“There will be no redemption. It is not me who is wrong. It's everyone else.”
― Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow

“Men wants us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.”
― Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow

“These are the things that life is all about. These moments. It’s not about the rituals. It’s not about getting by. It’s about the stack of tiny little moments of joy and love that add up to a lifetime that’s been worthwhile. You can’t measure them; you can only capture them, like snapshots in your mind.”
― C. Robert Cargill, Sea of Rust

“The world does not deserve my respect. It is not worthy of my kindness or compassion.”
― Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow

“We have become the very worst parts of our makers, without the little things, the good things, the magic things, that made them them.”
― C. Robert Cargill, Sea of Rust

“He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud...”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Should I tell you the truth I know, or try to guess the untruth you want?”
― Elizabeth Moon, Remnant Population

“Yes, she had needed that. She had needed it all her life, without knowing that was what she needed. The joy of creation, of play, had been the empty place unfilled by family and social duties. She would have loved her children better, she thought now, if she had realized how much she herself needed to play, to follow her own childish desire to handle beautiful things and make more beauty.”
― Elizabeth Moon, Remnant Population

“Men learn to regard rape as a moment in time; a discreet episode with a beginning, middle, and end. But for women, rape is thousands of moments that we fold into ourselves over a lifetime.
Its' the day that you realize you can't walk to a friend's house anymore or the time when your aunt tells you to be nice because the boy was just 'stealing a kiss.' It's the evening you stop going to the corner store because, the night before, a stranger followed you home. It's the late hour that a father or stepfather or brother or uncle climbs into your bed. It's the time it takes you to write an email explaining that you're changing your major, even though you don't really want to, in order to avoid a particular professor. It's when you're racing to catch a bus, hear a person demand a blow job, and turn to see that it's a police officer. It's the second your teacher tells you to cover your shoulders because you'll 'distract the boys, and what will your male teachers do?' It's the minute you decide not to travel to a place you've always dreamed about visiting and are accused of being 'unadventurous.' It's the sting of knowing that exactly as the world starts expanding for most boys, it begins to shrink for you. All of this goes on all day, every day, without anyone really uttering the word rape in a way that grandfathers, fathers, brothers, uncles, teachers, and friends will hear it, let alone seriously reflect on what it means.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“Ask a man what his greatest fear is about serving jail time, and he will almost inevitably say he fears being raped. What can we deduce from the fact that jail is to men what life is to so many women?”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“I look at my skin and it is glowing with constellations of ancestors. I ask them about escape and freedom and listen for revelation.”
― Junauda Petrus, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

“Mabel. Loving on you is prayer, like the prayers of bees is honey. We loved on each other like we always been. My fingers caressed your naps in this life. It placed oils. And we was infinite and knew how to love. On the scalp. Along the cornrow and on each other. These coilings was anoited like a real love. We was a cosmic conversation, before I even met you in this life.”
― Junauda Petrus, The Stars and the Blackness Between Them

“Sometimes I'm torn about eyes
because there are times when I'm
riding the bus
walking to class
shopping with my mom,

when I look up to find
eyes on my body,
hungry stare, sometimes someone
my age and sometimes
not, a stare that turns me
into a meal.

And sometimes I like the way it feels
like someone has lit a torch
in my stomach in the deepest night
and all the moths come seeking.

Is it possible
to like something sometimes
and hate it other times?

Am I allowed
to decide when
I want to be
a feast?”
― Olivia A. Cole, Dear Medusa

“I remember the thing
that I saw on Tumblr,
how people with trauma
will sometimes reexpose
themselves to it,
salt in the wound
to stay alive.

I am tired
of salting the wound -
I am ready
to salt the earth.”
― Olivia A. Cole, Dear Medusa

“She'd laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Please, my darling Inej, treasure of my heart, won’t you do me the honor of acquiring me a new hat?”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Men mock the gods until they need them, Kaz.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“I would have come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that's what we do. We never stop fighting.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“She smiled then, her eyes red, her cheeks scattered with some kind of dust. It was a smile he thought he might die to earn again.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom