Velvet > Velvet's Quotes

“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld

“Reader's Bill of Rights

1. The right to not read

2. The right to skip pages

3. The right to not finish

4. The right to reread

5. The right to read anything

6. The right to escapism

7. The right to read anywhere

8. The right to browse

9. The right to read out loud

10. The right to not defend your tastes”
― Daniel Pennac

“when a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world. ”
― Steiner G

“The principal function of racist ideas in American history has been the suppression of resistance to racial discrimination and its resulting racial disparities. The beneficiaries of slavery, segregation, and mass incarceration have produced racist ideas of Black people being best suited for or deserving of the confines of slavery, segregation, or the jail cell. Consumers of these racist ideas have been led to believe there is something wrong with Black people, and not the policies that have enslaved, oppressed, and confined so many Black people.”
― Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

“She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year. "A few hundred," she said.
"How do you have the time?" he asked, gobsmacked.
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in reflective surfaces? I am reading!
"I don't know," she said, shrugging.”
― Eleanor Brown, The Weird Sisters

“I’d have bet on seeing Eva Gabor on Forty-Second Street before you. Are you crying?” “No. Yes. Oh, Bobby!” Sue explained: She had been in the city for two months, sleeping on Rebecca’s couch. Her savings were running out. No agents would give her the time of day.”
― Tom Hanks, Uncommon Type: Some Stories

“Sweet tea with milk, three Oreos, and Bob Roy’s snug and cozy flat helped Sue breathe deeply for the first time in months. She let out a sigh as big as a cresting wave and leaned back into a chair so soft it put the z in cozy. “Okay,” Bob said. “Tell me everything.” She opened up about, well, everything, cued by Bob’s sympathy. He uttered his support at every story, every anecdote: New York was the only place for Sue to be! Shelley and her “yeah, okay” attitude were to be expected from such a see-you-next-Tuesday! The subway was survivable as long as you never made eye contact with anyone. You found an apartment by reading the Rental classifieds in the Times and The Village Voice, but you had to get them early, at seven in the morning, and then you had to hightail it to the apartments with a bag of donuts because the super would always open up for a pretty girl who shared her donuts.”
― Tom Hanks, Uncommon Type: Some Stories

“Don't fuck with librarians, young lady. We know the power of words.”
― Jay Kristoff, Darkdawn

“If I told you monsters could be tamed, would you want to live with monsters? Even a tame monster is still a monster.”
― Julie Eshbaugh, Crown of Oblivion: A Gripping YA Survival Fantasy About a Cutthroat Race for Freedom

“The defenders of decent society and the disciples of degeneracy are often the same people.”
― Caleb Carr, The Alienist

“I thought being a man was having control. Being the master and commander of your own destiny. How could any boy know that freedom is lost the moment you become a man. Things start to count. To press in. Constricting slowly, inevitably, creating a cage of inconveniences and duties and deadlines and failed plans and lost friends.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“Life has no remote....get up and change it yourself!”
― Mark A. Cooper, Operation Einstein

“Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking."
"An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.”
― Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

“People love talking, and I have never been a huge talker. I carry on an inner monologue, but the words often don't reach my lips.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl