Eden > Eden's Quotes

“The one who wears the chains is a thousand times greater than the one who wields them,”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. Everybody's gonna die. Come watch TV”
― Morty

“Within this impossible sea, every star, every constellation, every fold and spiral of the cosmos was reflected. As if there were two firmaments, and their ship was a ghost ship, adrift between worlds. The sea had turned itself to glass, so the heavens might finally look upon themselves.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“There’s a particular feeling in your body when something goes right after a long time of things going wrong. It feels warm and sweet and loose.”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“It's strange, to not be the youngest kind of adult anymore”
― Lily King, Writers & Lovers

“It can be really exasperating to look back at your past. What’s the matter with you? I want to ask her, my younger self, shaking her shoulder. If I did that, she would probably cry. Maybe I would cry, too.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“But the Beatles turned out to be one of the things you couldn’t avoid, like alcohol, or death.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“It seemed very remarkable that you could travel halfway around the world and still end up looking at some ducks.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot

“I was going to remember, or discover, where everything came from. I was going to do the subtle, monstrous thing where you figured out what you were doing, and why.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“All I was ever trying to do when I wrote, I realized, was to show how much I saw and understood.”
― Elif Batuman, Either/Or

“I've never really not written, never not had another world of my own making to escape to, never known how to be in this world without most of my soul dreaming up and living in another.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“Seeing someone you used to love is like visiting a house you once lived in.”
― Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

“I am always chasing my children. I remember feeling chased as a child, but I never remember my mother chasing me. Perhaps she did not. Perhaps this is why I am the person I turned out to be.”
― Dizz Tate, Brutes

“I realize now, the older you get, the harder it is to be impressed because people make you feel ashamed of ever being impressed by anything at all. I kept many glowing remarks to myself because of this.”
― Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

“I am slowly learning to never accept less than I deserve. Deciding how much I deserve is another matter. I wish someone would say to me, "I will never look up or down at you.”
― Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

“If she believed the boardwalk T-shirts, a woman was a ball or chain, someone stupid you’re with, someone to lie to so a man can drink beer. If she believed television fathers, women were a constant pain, wanting red roses or a nice dinner out. If she learned how to be a girl from songs, it was worse. If she learned from other girls, worse still.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”
― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

“I came to the realization that every moment exists in perpetuity regardless of whether it’s remembered. What has happened has happened; it occupies that moment in time forever. I was an eleven-year-old girl lying in the grass one summer. I knew in that moment that was true and recognized that I would blaze through moments for the rest of my life, forgetting things, and becoming ages older, until I forgot everything—so I consoled myself by committing to remember that one moment.”
― Emily R. Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my having ever written anything, or being able to imagine ever writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.”
― Elif Batuman, The Idiot