Leon Branes > Leon's Quotes

“You can’t save anyone who wouldn’t save themselves without you. It’s the hardest lesson to learn in life, take it from me.
- p. 47, The Brothers Silver”
― Marc Jampole, The Brothers Silver

“Hearts are healed by the sea.”
― Marilyn Dalla Valle, Westwind Secrets

“Lupe would have a lot to say about this. I can almost hear her gravelly voice in my head. There is no hate without fear, she'd say. Hate is fear crystallized, fear objectified. We hate what threatens our selves, our dreams, our plans, our freedom, our place in the world, our place in the hearts of the people we love. We fear first. Then we hate.

And I know what I would say to her in response. Lupe, I'd say. My troubles are just beginning.”
― Paullina Simons, Lone Star

“This love was a torment, and he resented bitterly the subjugation in which it held him; he was a prisoner and he longed for freedom.

Sometimes he awoke in the morning and felt nothing; his soul leaped, for he thought he was free; he loved no longer; but in a little while, as he grew wide awake, the pain settled in his heart, and he knew that he was not cured yet.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“I thought I knew what heartbreak was. I thought that was what Maven did to me. When he stood and left me kneeling. When he told me everything I ever thought him to be was a lie. But then, I believed I loved him.

I know now, I didn't know what love was. Or what even the echo of heartbreak felt like.

To stand in front of a person who is your whole world and be told you are not enough. You are not the choice. You are a shadow to the person who is your sun.”
― Victoria Aveyard, King's Cage

“The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Life after Death

“All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“Let us proceed under the assumption that the fairy folk do exist, and that I am not a gibbering moron.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“What I saw was more than I could stand. The noise I heard had been made by Little Ann. All her life she had slept by Old Dan's side. And although he was dead, she had left the doghouse, had come back to the porch, and snuggled up by his side.”
― Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows

“The stranger swore briefly but vividly.”
― H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man

“[Traveling] makes you realize what an immeasurably nice place much of America could be if only people possessed the same instinct for preservation as they do in Europe. You would think the millions of people who come to Williamsburg every year would say to each other, "Gosh, Bobbi, this place is beautiful. Let's go home to Smellville and plant lots of trees and preserve all the fine old buildings." But in fact that never occurs to them. They just go back and build more parking lots and Pizza Huts.”
― Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

“It's not that you should never love something so much that it can control you.
It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.
It's not a weakness.
It's your best strength.”
― Patrick Ness, The Ask and the Answer

“You love your country," she said. "I can't let you give all that up." He caught a glimmer of pain and hope in her eyes, and before he knew what he was doing , he'd closed the distance between them, one hand on her waist and the other on her shoulder.

"I'd be the greatest fool in the world to let you go alone.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Crown of Midnight

“People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even saying a word.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“That was all part of giving someone a piece of your heart; they ended up taking a whole chunk of your mind and reserving it all for themselves.”
― Cecelia Ahern, If You Could See Me Now

“Where do I belong in this country? Where is home?”
― Wallace Stegner, The Big Rock Candy Mountain

“Surely that gift—the gift of a world of human decency—is the one that all countries hunger for still.”
― Lois Lowry, Number the Stars

“Ruxandra pulled the blanket down just far enough to see the two girls shut the door behind them, stuff something under it to block any light, and throw a blanket over the shutters. A flint sparked one, twice, and a taper flared to life, lighting the faces of her friends. Adela was a short blonde whose breasts pushed against her nightdress and were the despair of the nuns’ attempts to instill modesty. Her parents had sent her to the convent in desperate hopes to keep her from scandal. And between her sweet, round face and her ability to lie shamelessly, she almost managed to make the nuns believe they were being successful. Valeria was slim and dark, a mischief-maker whose pranks had gotten her in trouble more than once. They were both her lovers. Adela called it practice for when they had husbands. Valeria called it wonderful. The nuns declared it a sin in no uncertain terms. And while Ruxandra did her best to obey the nuns in most matters, and to turn her thoughts to God and do his good work, she could not stop loving the girls. From the moment she’d first held Adela’s hand, she’d known that, whatever else their feelings were for each other, they were too sweet to be sinful.”
― John Patrick Kennedy, Princess Dracula

“Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

“Van Gogh would’ve sold more than one painting if he’d put tigers in them.”
― Bill Watterson

“Mrs. Gamely had gotten a letter through, inviting them to visit as soon as they could, and reporting that, in these years just before the millennium Lake of the Coheeries had had had hard winters--yes--but also extraordinary summers which had made the village overflow with natural wealth, "in the agrarian and lexicographical senses of the word. There is so much food, everywhere," her friend had written for her, "and so many new and wonderful words being generated, that the storehouses and closets are overflowing. We are tubflooded with neologisms, smoked fish, and fruit pies.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“The sad thing was in the knowing that all their nerve would get them nowhere in the world and that they were lost as all people in Brooklyn seem lost when the day is nearly over and even though the sun is still bright, it is thin and doesn’t give you warmth when it shines on you.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“There are roughly 1,200 dogs trained to detect bombs and bomb making materials in the US - and over 40,000 trained to detect marijuana. Some of the bomb-dogs are also cross trained as drug-dogs which accounts for their ability to sleep well at night.”
― T. Rafael Cimino, Mid Ocean

“Evil is also not anything small or close to home, and not the worst; otherwise one could grow accustomed to it.”
― Brothers Grimm, The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham

“Vina e un vis, mila e singura realitate.”
― Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s List

“You have to admit that anatomically, this ear business rivals my father’s fear that a bicycle seat could ruin your virginity”
― Kathleen Zamboni McCormick, Dodging Satan: My Irish/Italian, Sometimes Awesome, But Mostly Creepy, Childhood

“Maybe we can politely ignore each other forever? I think that's the mature thing to do.”
― Sara Pascoe, Weirdo

“Her husband's visage captivated her from the first moment she saw him step out of the royal carriage a hundred years ago. How could it not? Flaminius was utterly gorgeous. But once she fell in love with him, she became happily enslaved.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“At what point does faith become insanity?”
― K. Ritz, Sheever's Journal, Diary of a Poison Master

“You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away - a man is not a piece of fruit.”
― Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman: Text and Criticism