olivia > olivia's Quotes

“In vain, I love you; in vain, the dawn streaming onto you, beside me; in vain, I want to be yours, your angel. Angel of love, angel of Michael.”
― rafael nicolás, Angels Before Man

“I survived because I remained soft, because I listened, because I wrote. Because I huddled close to my truth, protected it like a tiny flame in a terrible storm. Hold up your head when the tears come, when you are mocked, insulted, questioned, threatened, when they tell you you are nothing, when your body is reduced to openings. The journey will be longer than you imagined, trauma will find you again and again. Do not become the ones who hurt you. Stay tender with your power. Never fight to injure, fight to uplift. Fight because you know that in this life, you deserve safety, joy, and freedom. Fight because it is your life. Not anyone else’s. I did it, I am here. Looking back, all the ones who doubted or hurt or nearly conquered me faded away, and I am the only one standing. So now, the time has come. I dust myself off, and go on.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“The one standing in infinite glory is you; the one fallen from grace is also you. What matters is ‘you’ and not the state of you.”
― Mò Xiāng Tóngxiù, 天官赐福 [Tiān Guān Cì Fú]

“I can’t lose the thing I’ve held onto for so long, you know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story, you know? I really, really need it to be that.”
“I know,” she says.
“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it”? I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“He couldn’t stand to look at the truth, even now. All they were—all they had ever been—was a pair of sunflowers who each believed the other was the sun.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“To get what you want, you have to know exactly how much you are willing to give up.

Never had he wanted something this badly, and held it in his hands knowing that tomorrow it would be gone, traded for the high cliffs of Ios, and the uncertain future across the border, the chance to stand before his brother, to ask him for all the answers that no longer seemed important. A kingdom, or this.”
― S.U. Pacat, Captive Prince: Volume Two

“I think if I gave you my heart, you would treat it tenderly.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“To gain everything and lose everything in the space of a moment. That is the fate of all princes destined for the throne.”
― C.S. Pacat, Kings Rising

“A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“We deserve to have our wrongdoing represented as much as our heroism, because when we refuse wrongdoing as a possibility for a group of people, we refuse their humanity.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“It always makes me a little sad when you laugh," Julian went on. "The way it sort of takes you by surprise. I love it, it has that sweet sincerity that's the best part of you, but it still kills me how you never seem to expect it. All I want to do is make you happy, and you're the unhappiest person I've ever met.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“I hope you looked west while I was looking east, and that for a moment you met my eyes without knowing it. I know you never look away, ever when your eyes are closed, but I'm never certain you can see what's really there.
I miss you to pieces.
Yours Always
- J”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“Side by side they are twin angels on a headstone, cold and terrible and immutable. They were boys once, he remembers, but they aren't anymore.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“He wanted to forget he'd ever yielded to the weakness of wanting anything. He wanted to scrub away any evidence that he existed outside his own head at all—that he was a visible object that anyone else could see and mock and judge.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“Believe in the things I try to tell you instead of the things you think you deserve to be told.
Keep writing. It doesn't matter what about. Please keep writing.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“He remembered the way love had burned through him like a flame under glass, grasping outward, devouring what air it had left before it choked.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“I always think of a passage from the Symposium, this allegory about people who started off as two halves of a whole, but then something cut them apart, and they spend their whole lives looking for their other half so they can fit themselves back together. And that's how it feels, it hurts, it's like I lost you before I was born.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“People will risk everything for a little bit of something beautiful.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“It’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“I wonder how much victimhood they’d be willing to grant a girl like me.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“He touched me first, said he wanted to kiss me, told me he loved me. Every first step was taken by him. I don’t feel forced, and I know I have the power to say no, but that isn’t the same as being in charge. But maybe he has to believe that. Maybe there’s a whole list of things he has to believe.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“He wants to make sure he’ll always be there, no matter what. He wants to leave his fingerprints all over me, every piece of muscle and bone.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? Why wasn’t it even better? It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“A home isn’t always the house we live in. It’s also the people we choose to surround ourselves with. You may not live on the island, but you can’t tell me it’s not your home. Your bubble, Mr. Baker. It’s been popped. Why would you allow it to grow around you again?”
― T.J. Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea

“There is another Eden, within me. I have it nestled between the heat of love. This is love.’
But when the sounds of heavy steps, approaching, came, they’d hastily rise. Gathering their clothes, taking each other’s hands, and laughing, they’d run away from Him, as fast they could. So that He doesn’t see, doesn’t notice. Two angels creating love, creating.”
― rafael nicolás, Angels Before Man

“Why, the angel asked, have you done this? Why does God divine punish and divine hurt, divine ache? There is a wound, shaped like God, in me. If there is any mercy in you, why did you create me, only to cast me out?”
― rafael nicolás, Angels & Man

“Satan said: "I was made for you." They both knew it. 'You were made for the pierce of my sword, my throat was made for your hands. I was made for you to kill. You were made for me to slaughter' "You make me sick." 'I still dream of you.' His lips were parted, asking. For a kiss? For the seed of religion?”
― rafael nicolás, Angels & Man