Melissa E. > Melissa's Quotes

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler

“How do we judge a dark landscape? Is it dark because the ones who already live there won't let humans have their piece of the world? Do we judge who is good and who is bad by the color and shape of their skin - or by what resonates in their hearts?”
― Anne Bishop, Sebastian

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate.”
― Maggie Stiefvater

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald

“Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them.”
― Sue Grafton, M is for Malice

“But other beings shouldn't be forgotten. You knew that when you were a student, felt that need from those no one else wanted to think about. Even demons need a home. Even a dark landscape should feel the warmth of the Light. Why have you forgotten that?”
― Anne Bishop, Sebastian

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“We know how it ends practically before it starts. That's why stories appeal to us. They give us the clarity and simplicity our real lives lack.”
― Anne Bishop, Daughter of the Blood

“Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments come at a cost.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

“...intelligence and success are not clear paths to popularity at any age. This complicates everything, because at the same time women need to...own their success, doing so causes them to be liked less.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

“Men can comfortably claim credit for what they do as long as they don't veer into arrogance. For women, taking credit comes at a real social and professional cost.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

“If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can’t be in books.
The book needs you.”
― Gary Paulsen, The Winter Room

“Do your thing and don't care if they like it.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
― Rachel Carson

“The bravest people are the ones who don’t mind looking like cowards.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.”
― Pauline Kael

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“There are risks, but progress is always dangerous, isn't it? Most of the time, walls don't get dismantled brick by brick. Someone has to crash through them.”
― Cristin Terrill, All Our Yesterdays

“Even across the dark, even across the loss, even across the emptiness, soul will speak to soul”
― Catherine Fisher, The Dark City

“Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything.”
― Sherwood Anderson

“More than anything, the journal wanted. It wanted more than it could hold, more than words could describe, more than diagrams could illustrate. Longing burst from the pages, in every frantic line and every hectic sketch and every dark-printed definition. There was something pained and melancholy about it.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“The only thing was, she didn't really want to see the future. What she wanted was to see something no one else could see or would see, and maybe that was asking for more magic that was in the world.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys

“And Ronan was everything that was left: molten eyes and a smile made for war.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Want and need were words that got eaten smaller and smaller: Freedom, autonomy, a perennial bank balance, a stainless-steel condo in a dustless city, a silky black car, to make out with Blue, eight hours of sleep, a cell phone, a bed, to kiss Blue just once, a blister-less heel, bacon for breakfast, to hold Blue's hand, one hour of sleep, toilet paper, deodorant, a soda, a minute to close his eyes.

What do you want, Adam?

To feel awake when my eyes are open.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“If you never saw the stars, candles were enough.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“His mother had told him that when you looked into the eyes of God at the pearly gates, all the questions you ever had were answered.

Ronan had a lot of questions.

Waking Glendower might be like that. Fewer angels attending, and maybe a heavier Welsh accent. Slightly less judgment.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven