Dannii Elle > Recent Status Updates

"The valley is a landscape painting. He's worried to step too heavily on the path, in case he puts a foot through the fragile canvas and falls out of the world."

I just adore this author's creation of setting!

"the spy is struck by the notion that the city's buildings and monuments are far more permanent and real than the people who live there. Everyone else around him is fleeting; a rush of water or a tongue of flame or a breath of air, but the stone remains. The city is immortal as the gods are immortal; the city needs its citizens like gods need worshippers, to feed on their prayers and the stuff of their souls."

"Writing isn't like any other kind of job I could have. Writing is my soul’s
work. I write to make me who I am and if I don’t write, I am not the best version of who I am."

Finally getting around to reading some of my long-standing tbr veterans.

“Some people see a bookshop as an archive, or a shrine, or even a time machine. But I think a bookshop is like a map of the world. There are infinite paths you can take through it and none of them are right or wrong. Here in a bookshop we give readers landmarks to help them find their way, but every reader has to learn to set their own compass.”

"no matter where you live, the biggest defect we human beings have is our shortsightedness. We don't see what we could be. We should be looking at our potential, stretching ourselves into everything we can become. But if you're surrounded by people who say 'I want mine now,' you end up with a few people who have everything and a military to keep the poor ones from rising up and stealing it."

"Are the things in your imagination less real than the things in front of you? Do the books you've read mean less to you because they haven't really happened to you? Do daydreams at midday or nightdreams at midnight mean nothing?"

I DIDN'T KNOW CHILDREN'S BOOKS COULD HAVE PLOT TWISTS LIKE THIS!!!

"Without love, we are birds with broken wings."

"tapes, like photographs and videos, are a desperate attempt to steal something from death's suitcase."

So, the answer to my previous question is yes. I am already tearing up!

This book is going to break me, isn't it?

"Books can change minds and change worlds, open doors and open minds, plant seeds that can grow into magical or even terrifying things. Stories are things to be loved and respected at the same time; never underestimate the power of them. It's why books are often casualties of censorship; those who ban or burn books are those who are scared of what can be found among their pages."

"The books we love when we're growing up shape us in a special way, Tilly. The characters in the books we read help us decide who we want to be."

Lazy Saturday mornings call for unlimited coffee, cosy blankets, and a whimsical middle grade adventure to immerse myself in.

“Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.”

"Love is fickle and fleeting... It is rarely a solid foundation for decisions to be made upon, in any game."

I had forgotten just how intense this book gets!

"I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark."

"The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones."

"Follow your dreams, Bailey," she says. "Be they Harvard or something else entirely. No matter what that father of yours says, or how loudly he might say it. He forget that he was someone's dream once, himself."

Wonders Never Cease by Robert Shearman - 4/5 stars

Alice in Armour by Jane Yolen - 3/5 stars

This book has sucked me in and won't let go!

"It was easy to make men kill each other over territory that only time could truly own. so easy to make them all think they were the good guys."

"Adults are bad at remembering how powerful they can be because somewhere along the line, they were shamed for their imagination."

"you're not powerful because you're strong, Christopher. you're powerful because you're good."

In awe of how good this is!

"At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored; that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition."

"Whale speech is long and low, it carries for miles like a current. There can be no match, in this universe or any other, for its expression of grief."