Cameron Dokey > Quotes

“Unhappy memories are persistent. They're specific, and it's the details that refuse to leave us alone. Though a happy memory may stay with you just as long as one that makes you miserable, what you remember softens over time. What you recall is simply that you were happy, not necessarily the individual moments that brought about your joy.

But the memory of something painful does just the opposite. It retains its original shape, all bony fingers and pointy elbows. Every time it returns, you get a quick poke in the eye or jab in the stomach. The memory of being unhappy has the power to hurt us long after the fact. We feel the injury anew each and every time we think of it.”
― Cameron Dokey, Belle

“Remember that yours is not the only heart that may be wishing for love.”
― Cameron Dokey, Before Midnight

“A story is alive, as you and I are. It is rounded by muscle and sinew. Rushed with blood. Layered with skin, both rough and smooth. At its core lies soft marrow of hard, white bone. A story beats with the heart of every person who has ever strained ears to listen. On the breath of the storyteller, it soars. Until its images and deeds become so real you can see them in the air, shimmering like oases on the horizon line. A story can fly like a bee, so straight and swift you catch only the hum of its passing. Or move so slowly it seems motionless, curled in upon itself like a snake in the sun. It can vanish like smoke before the wind. Linger like perfume in the nose. Change with every telling, yet always remain the same.”
― Cameron Dokey

“I had to cease to mourn what could never be and make the most of what was possible. And I would begin doing that by trying to mend the hurts of the past.”
― Cameron Dokey, The Wild Orchid: A Retelling of The Ballad of Mulan

“Love so joyfully and freely given can never be taken away. It is never truly gone.”
― Cameron Dokey, Before Midnight

“That is what love is I thought. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.”
― Cameron Dokey, Golden

“Maybe all young men who love us become knights in shining armor when we love them back.”
― Cameron Dokey, Golden

“Over and over, we start our own tales, compose our own stories, whether our lives are short or long. Until at last all our beginnings come down to just one end, and the tale of who we are is done.”
― Cameron Dokey, Before Midnight

“Darkness may cover light, but that is not the same thing as putting it out. Whereas, to overcome darkness, all light need do is to exist.”
― Cameron Dokey, Sunlight and Shadow

“I have not led an ordinary life, nor a life that would suit everyone. I took great risks, but because I did, I also earned great reward. I found the way to show my true face freely, without fear. Because of this, I found true love.”
― Cameron Dokey, The Wild Orchid: A Retelling of The Ballad of Mulan

“For surely a king is first a man. And so it must follow that a king does as all men do: the best he can.”
― Cameron Dokey, The Storyteller's Daughter

“As long as a thing is unknown, it belongs to us in a way that well-known things do not. For we have the opportunity to fill the empty, unknown spaces for ourselves, and in them there is room for imagination and for hope.”
― Cameron Dokey

“Love cannot thrive simply by being offered. Sooner or later it must be accepted and reciprocated. It must be seen for what it is and nourished according to its needs, or it will die.”
― Cameron Dokey, Winter's Child

“Oswald: "All your life"
Aurore: "What?"
Oswald: "All your life, isn't that what you wanted to know? How long I loved you?"
Aurore: "Well, yes, I suppose I did, but that wasn't what I was going to ask just now."
Oswald: "I tell you I've loved you since the day you were born, and you tell me you want to know something else. There's no one quite like you, is there, Aurore?”
― Cameron Dokey, Beauty Sleep

“Little princess, lovely as the dawn, well named Aurore.”
― Cameron Dokey, Beauty Sleep

“True love comes when it will, not when it's called.”
― Cameron Dokey

“If you have to ask, you've never been in love. More than that, you've never had your feelings hurt by the one you want to trust and cherish you most of all.”
― Cameron Dokey, Golden

“You must never call your enemy by a name you choose for him." “Instead you must call him by the name he calls himself. What he chooses will reflect his pride; it will reveal his desires. But what you choose to call him will reveal your fears, which should be kept to yourself, lest your enemy find the way to exploit them.”
― Cameron Dokey, The Wild Orchid: A Retelling of The Ballad of Mulan

“I will not fail,' the water bearer's daughter vowed. 'But worse than failing is not to try at all. For then there can be no hope of success.”
― Cameron Dokey, The Storyteller's Daughter

“All of us show many faces to the world. No one shows her true face all of the time. To do that would be dangerous, for what is seen can also be known.”
― Cameron Dokey, The Wild Orchid: A Retelling of The Ballad of Mulan

“A will to be unkind is like a sickness. It can be healed or driven out. But to be unkind because you are thoughtless is the worst kind of blindness: difficult to cure, because you cannot see the fault even as you commit it.”
― Cameron Dokey, Golden

“That is what love is. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making, over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.”
― Cameron Dokey, Golden

“Keep what you hold in your heart safe and strong.”
― Cameron Dokey

“Really believing in "once upon a time". Believing that it will draw you in, take you with me to a place you've never been before.”
― Cameron Dokey

“Even the most straightforward of paths could turn out to be more complicated than it seemd at first.”
― Cameron Dokey

“Five is for five heartbeats, the length of time it takes to breathe in or out. For that is how quickly a life may change, for better or for ill. The time it takes to make up, or change, your mind.”
― Cameron Dokey, Belle

“For in hope's absence, a miracle arrived”
― Cameron Dokey

“In spite of myself, I gave a snort. "Just once, I'd like to hear a simple, straightforward prophecy.”
― Cameron Dokey, Sunlight and Shadow

“But no matter what you do to postpone it, the future always shows up at your door.”
― Cameron Dokey, Belle

“How much easier my life would be if I did not love you! I thought. How much less painful, but how much plainer. How much less color there would be in the world.”
― Cameron Dokey, Sunlight and Shadow