a Source of Light > a Source of Light's Quotes

“I have never understood potatoes,” Sissix said. “The whole point of a potato is to cover it with salt so you don’t notice how bland it is. Why not just get a salt lick and skip the potato?”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“Jenks always waits until the end of the speech,” Kizzy said with a fond smile. “Just to be polite.” Rosemary looked back to the jittery AI. “That’s not a sentient model, is it?”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“Jenks always waits until the end of the speech,” Kizzy said with a fond smile. “Just to be polite.” Rosemary looked back to the jittery AI. “That’s not a sentient model, is it?” “I don’t think so,” said Ashby. “But try telling Jenks that. He always gives AIs the benefit of the doubt.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“Nobody should be alone,” Sissix said. “Being alone and untouched … there’s no punishment worse than that. And she’s done nothing wrong. She’s just different.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“Aeluon women didn’t have breasts, but after meeting Pei, Ashby had found that he could do without. His teenage self would’ve been horrified.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I can please you, I swear it. You will find none more loyal than me. I will do anything.” I do think he loved me a little. For before I could say the thousand humiliating things in my heart, all the proofs of passion I had hoarded, the crawling devotions I would do, I felt his power come around me. And with that same flick he had used upon the cushions, he sent me back to my rooms.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Too late, I thought. Too late for all the things I should have known. I had made so many mistakes that I could not find my way back through their tangle to the first one.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Tell me,” I said, “how do you know that your father is not right about my poisons? How do you know I will not drug you where you sit?” “I do not.” “Yet you would dare to stay?” “I dare anything,” he said. And that is how we came to be lovers.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I did not lie dreaming of him during the days, I did not speak his name into my pillow. He was no husband, scarcely even a friend. He was a poison snake, and I was another, and on such terms we pleased ourselves.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You are wrong about witchcraft,” I told her. “It does not come from hate. I made my first spell for love of Glaucos.” I could hear her mink-voice as if she stood before me. Yet it was in defiance of our father, in defiance of all those who slighted you and would keep you from your desires.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Rage and grief, thwarted desire, lust, self-pity: these are emotions gods know well. But guilt and shame, remorse, ambivalence, those are foreign countries to our kind, which must be learned stone by stone.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I did not see the worst of him. Even at his best he was not an easy man. But he was a friend to me in a time when I needed one.” “It is strange to think of a goddess needing friends.” “All creatures that are not mad need them.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Then he would leave for the underworld, where I could never go, for gods are the opposite of death. I tried to imagine those dusky hills and gray meadows, the shades moving slow and white among them. Some walked hand in hand with those they had loved in life; some waited, secure that one day their beloved would come. And for those who had not loved, whose lives had been filled with pain and horror, there was the black river Lethe, where one might drink and forget. Some consolation.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It’s not a lot – not nearly enough to fill the gaping void inside me – but it’s something. It’s always nice being fancied. It’s always nice being wanted. Even if it’s by the wrong person.”
― Tabitha Suzuma, Forbidden

“I’ll stay with her for as long as she likes. I’ll marry her, if that’s what she wants. I mean, at the end of the day, what the hell does it matter who I end up with if it can’t be you?”
― Tabitha Suzuma, Forbidden

“Fine.’ I shut down my thoughts, shut down my senses. ‘I’ll tell Francie tomorrow. She’ll be over the moon. But she’s a decent person, Lochan. You can’t just dump her after a week.’ ‘I won’t.’ He looks at me, his eyes full. ‘I’ll stay with her for as long as she likes. I’ll marry her, if that’s what she wants. I mean, at the end of the day, what the hell does it matter who I end up with if it can’t be you?”
― Tabitha Suzuma, Forbidden

“all the air exits my lungs and I cannot muster the strength to fill them again. If I keep breathing, then I have to keep living, and if I keep living, then I have to keep hurting, and I can’t – not like this.”
― Tabitha Suzuma, Forbidden

“I told Mensah through the feed that I wouldn’t speak aloud on the comm anymore. She tapped back an acknowledgment on the feed, and I heard her telling the others to get off my feed and my comm, that she was going to be the only one speaking to me so I wasn’t distracted. Mensah underestimated my ability to ignore humans but I appreciated the thought.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“Sometimes humans can’t help but let emotion bleed through into the feed.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“There are other girls,” his mother said. “Good girls.” “She is a good girl,” Park said. “You don’t even know her.” His dad was standing, pushing Park toward the door. “Go,” he said sternly. “Go play basketball or something.” “Good girls don’t dress like boys,” his mother said.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“All the men’s clothes she wore just called attention to how much of a girl she was.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Park,” she said, “do you … want to look like girl? Is that what this about? Eleanor dress like boy. You look like girl?”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“The place had clearly been terraformed within an inch of its life; there was just no other way continents ended up perfectly square.”
― Rachel Bach, Heaven's Queen

“The weakness he’d opened in me was here to stay no matter what, so why not enjoy the fall?”
― Rachel Bach, Heaven's Queen

“The people we love are the ones who hurt us the most, after all.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“another boy has no penis, though he stuffs a sock into his underwear after every shower;”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“Accuracy is sacrificed in the name of better poetry.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“In psychopaths’ mental world people do not exist except as objects, targets, and obstacles.”
― Paul Babiak, Snakes in Suits, Revised Edition: Understanding and Surviving the Psychopaths in Your Office