carolina > carolina's Quotes

“Elio: This is my spot. All mine. I come here to read. I can't tell you the number of booksI've read here.

Oliver: Do you like being alone?

Elio: No. No one likes being alone. But I've learned how to live with it.

Oliver: Are you always so very wise?

Elio: I'm not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words togethet - it doesn't mean I know how to speak about the things that matter most to me.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Per aspera ad astra. I’d heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns, to the stars.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Tell me that and we’ll go. Right now. Save ourselves and leave this place to burn. Tell me that’s how you want your story to go and we’ll write it straight across the sand.”
― Alwyn Hamilton, Rebel of the Sands

“The world makes things for each place. Fish for the sea, Rocs for the mountain skies, and girls with sun in their skin and perfect aim for a desert that doesn't let weakness live.”
― Alwyn Hamilton, Rebel of the Sands

“Once there was a boy from the sea who fell in love with a girl from the desert.
[...]
But he wondered if a boy from the sea and a girl from the desert could ever survive together. He feared that she might burn him alive or that he might drown her. Until finally he stopped fighting it and set himself on fire for her.”
― Alwyn Hamilton, Hero at the Fall

“But then, this was what the desert did to us. It made us dreamers with weapons.”
― Alwyn Hamilton, Traitor to the Throne

“But even if the desert forgot a thousand and one of our stories, it was enough that they would tell of us at all. That long after our deaths, men and women sitting around a fire would hear that once, long ago, before we were all just stories, we lived.”
― Alwyn Hamilton, Hero at the Fall

“He may not have said the words, but I know my son. I saw the way he looked at you."
"How?"
"Like he'd do murder for you.”
― Jessica Spotswood, Born Wicked

“I cannot imagine a life without books.
Without Father's stories of the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, without pirate stories and fairy tales and poems. Without the hope of another way, of freedom and adventure beyond what we have here and now. How dark life would be.”
― Jessica Spotswood, Star Cursed

“From my vantage point I can see the back of his neck flush pink beneath his collar. He's got freckles there, too. I wonder how many more freckle's he's got. Are they all over, or just where the sun's touched?
Good Lord, why am I thinking of Finn Belastra without his clothes on?”
― Jessica Spotswood, Born Wicked

“Countries are forged by war; perhaps girls are, too. New England and I will be reborn together in this war between the witches and the Brothers. Between Maura and me.

I am newly wrought -- a girl of steel and snow and heartrending good-byes.

My magic is renewed by my heartbreak. It spills out my fingertips, swirling around me. The wind picks up, bitter cold now. The rain turns abruptly to snow, haloing the gas streetlamps like iron angels. Enormous snowflakes begin to fall -- fast, faster -- obscuring my sister, hiding her and Brenna and the carriage and the gray stone building that has become my home.

I am all alone in a sea of whirling white.

It feels right that it should be so.”
― Jessica Spotswood, Star Cursed

“You, in the moonlight, in this library, in this dress--" His eyes rove over me, from my frothy pink skirts embroidered with dark pink roses, past the swell of my breasts, up to the creamy skin of my neck. My breath comes fast as his gaze lingers on my lips. He's barely touching me, but it feels as though he's already undressed me with his eyes.
"Its the most beautiful thing. Like a dream." His voice is hoarse and full of wonder.
"Then its my dream, too," I confess as I claim his lips with mine,”
― Jessica Spotswood, Star Cursed

“Cate, I cant say what you want to hear. Not yet. I want you to know that--when I do, I'll mean it. Completely. Irrevocably."
"When?" I ask, voice small but hopeful. "Not if?"
"When." He takes my cold hand in his. "I'm falling in love with you more every day. I don't know if they were the same things I loved about you before, but now--the bit of red in your hair. The way you tilt your chin when you get angry, like you're charging into battle. How fiercely protective you are of the people you care about. How big your capacity for forgiveness is. You are an amazing woman, Cate Cahill.”
― Jessica Spotswood, Sisters' Fate

“Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all”
― Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials

“We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth being cold for that.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“Lonely? I don't know. They tell me this is cold. I don't know what cold is, because I don't freeze. So I don't know what lonely means either. Bears are made to be solitary.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“But suppose your dæmon settles in a shape you don't like?

Well, then, you're discontented, en't you? There's plenty of folk as'd like to have a lion as a dæmon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they're going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling, that is.

But it didn't seem to Lyra that she would ever grow up.”
― Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.”
― Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

“From what we are, spirit; from what we do, matter. Matter and spirit are one.”
― Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

“Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.”
― Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife