The Girl in Green Quotes

“Geneva was undeniably beautiful. The problem was the Calvinist mood. It was serene here to the point of sterility. In Arwood’s view, the collective goal of Swiss life was to get from birth to death without incident. If that wasn’t your own philosophy, the city would never be more than a distraction from the life you actually wanted to live.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“the only thing worse than evil was deciding that evil didn’t matter.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“I’m starting to think,” he eventually continued, “that maybe we leave parts of ourselves behind in certain situations—some essential piece of ourselves that we have to cut off, otherwise there’s no way out. The future becomes a kind of journey to discover what you might actually have left behind and what you’re supposed to do about it. It’s more than trauma. It’s like a phantom limb, but with a piece of your soul.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“When Charlotte was two and a half, she became obsessed with hair clips. She needed to touch them, collect them, put them in the box, take them out of the box, lose them, find them, put them in her hair, take them out of her hair so she could see them, have them in and out of her hair at the same time so she could wear them and see them and hold them at the same time, and she needed to sleep in them, but she couldn’t sleep in them because they had sharp edges and could hurt, so she wasn’t allowed to until finally he and Vanessa relented after a scream so angry, so long, and so high-pitched that the wavelengths were converted into light and she glowed with the hellfire of a thousand suns at the cosmic injustice of her parents’ arbitrary authority, but alas, she couldn’t sleep in peace because the sharp edges of the hair clips hurt her head.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“Arwood Hobbes was bored, Not regular bored, Not your casual, rainy-day, Cat in the Hat—style bored that arrives with the wet, leaving you with nothing to do. It wasn't post-fun or pre-excitement bored, either. It was, somehow, different. It felt rare and deliberate, entire and complete, industrial and inescapable. It was the kind of bored that had you backstroking in the green mist of eternity wondering about the big questions without searching for answers.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“Oh, Märta, please,” Tigger says. “Your very presence would be an insult to these people. I hate this Scandinavian quality you all have, especially that face you all make when confronted with your own naiveté.” “What face?”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“That face—the face of fake confusion you hide behind to pretend you don’t even understand me, so that your Scandinavian identity of moral purity is not threatened.” “The Finns are different,” Herb says. “They never speak,” Tigger says. “That’s the old ones. Young ones never shut up. Something’s going on up there.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“and the more ways scholars can experience the old shells, the greater their capacity to make creative associations, thereby advancing the field. Plus,”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“The girl then seemed to prove Märta’s point—and not her own—by focusing the rest of her talk on change and the future rather than on continuity and the past, which was the West’s first error over here.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“she’d instruct the sages to rewrite the calendars so that time would be measured in liquid—by “half a bottle ago,” or “when the vintage has matured.” Poetry would soar again, and music would fill the halls. It might subvert punctuality. But what really matters—birth, love, death—doesn’t abide by the clock”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“These people, this ISIL, we should fight them, yes. We can bomb them, yes. But that’s not a strategy for victory. This is a guerra fría. Victory lies in replacing their social order, which is why they are afraid, and they should be. And our secret weapon? It is not drones. Quite the opposite. It is women. We should free them, educate them, give them power—put a Juliet in every village. They will change the world. This is why Boko Haram is so afraid of the girls and abducts them, why the Taliban will not educate them, why ISIL murders those in Western clothes and who think freely. Women. They are how the West will win. They are how love will prevail.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“Because people aren’t rational actors, Benton. People are themselves. If you want to know what’s going to happen next, you don’t look at the choice, you look at who’s making it. That’s what I learned as an arms broker. In this case, it’s Märta. I think Märta wants to see you rescued,”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“different”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“Assalamu’alaikum aa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh . . . “Peace and mercy and blessings of God be upon you.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“Buckaroo Banzai was right: no matter where you go, there you are.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“If there’s no tomorrow, why get rid of yesterday?”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“Proof. There is nothing more theoretical than proof. The pagans asked the Prophet Muhammad for proof—he split the moon in two, but that was not enough for them.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“the only thing worse than evil was deciding that evil didn’t matter”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“In chemistry, the answers are out there, waiting to be found. But in life, in politics, in war, the answers aren’t there yet.”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green

“a scream so angry, so long, and so high-pitched that the wavelengths were converted into light and she glowed with the hellfire of a thousand suns...”
― Derek B. Miller, The Girl in Green