Amber > Amber's Quotes

“When she scansioned me I felt like a third-rate poet showing his doggerel to a Shakespeare. When I scansioned her, I felt like a minnow tipped from a jar into a deep inland sea.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Being clever was, after all, my primary source of self-esteem. I’m a very sad person, in all senses of the word, but at least I was going to get into university.”
― Alice Oseman, Radio Silence

“I put my hand on the altar rail. 'What if ... what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reason, or ...' Mam's pancakes with Toblerone sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, 'Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite'; or Jacko and Sharon singing 'For She's A Squishy Marshmallow' instead of 'For She's A Jolly Good Fellow' every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it's not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. 'S'pose Heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there for ever, but more like ... Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or ... upstairs windows when you're lost ...”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I'd be one day to look inside it.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“Her only friends on the estate were books, and books can talk but do not listen.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“I think about pinball, and how being a kid’s like being shot up the firing lane and there’s no veering left or right; or you’re just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you’re sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there’s a thousand different paths you can take, some amazing, others not. Tiny little differences in angles and speed’ll totally alter what happens to you later, so a fraction of an inch to the right, and the ball’ll just hit a pinger and a dinger and fly down between your flippers, no messing, a waste of 10 p. But a fraction to the left and it’s action in the play zone, bumpers and kickers, ramps and slingshots and fame on the high-score table.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“I got four A grades [...] I expected to be happy about it. I expected to be jumping up and down and crying from joy.
But I didn't feel any of that. It just wasn't disappointment.”
― Alice Oseman, Radio Silence

“No child or future generation will ever know what this was like. They will never understand. When it is over we will go quietly among the living and we will not tell them. We will talk and sleep and go about our business like human beings. We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our hearts and no words will reach us.”
― Sebastian Faulks

“What if by sheer repetition we become the person we most often pretend to be? Does that mean there is no authentic self? Are we made of habits, compressed by time, like layered rocks?”
― Ben Okri, The Age of Magic

“I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free.”
― Laini Taylor, Days of Blood & Starlight

“Which is what one always hopes will happen: for life to take over and be bigger and more marvelous than what we can dream up on our own.
Life doesn’t need magic to be magical.
(But a little bit sure doesn't hurt.)”
― Laini Taylor, Night of Cake & Puppets

“She was prettier than a bouquet of roses and crazier than a headless chicken. Fitting in was not an option.”
― Marissa Meyer, Winter

“Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his dog and his friends. And a summer that never ends.”
― Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“He couldn’t see why people made such a fuss about people eating their silly old fruit anyway, but life would be a lot less fun if they didn’t. And there was never an apple, in Adam’s opinion, that wasn’t worth the trouble you got into for eating it.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Not for the first time Marianne thinks cruelty does not only hurt the victim, but the perpetrator also, and maybe more deeply and more permanently.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Shyness takes so many different forms. Some people are shy and soft. Some, shy and hard. Or in Josh’s case, shy, and wrapped in military-grade armor. “Josh,”
― Sally Thorne, The Hating Game

“So I’m doing it for you because that’s how people should behave; they should fill in each other’s gaps.”
― Talia Hibbert, Get a Life, Chloe Brown

“You are a woman who, in a life filled with pain, came here to ask about love.”
― Talia Hibbert, Get a Life, Chloe Brown

“If something keeps you human when pressure makes you feel like a volcano, hold onto that thing by whatever means necessary.”
― Talia Hibbert, Take a Hint, Dani Brown

“She was the sweetest person on Earth, only she wasn't used to getting any of that sweetness back.”
― Talia Hibbert, Take a Hint, Dani Brown

“I love you,” I say to him, only it comes out, “Hey.”
“So damn much,” he says back, only it comes out, “Dude.”
He still won’t meet my eyes.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I think you can sort of slip out of your life and it can be hard to find a way back in.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I'm thinking the reason I've been so quiet all those years is only because Brian wasn't around yet for me to tell everything to.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I understand the quicksand of shame.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“...it is sad, of course, to forget.
But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.
To remember when no one else does.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“But if you only walk in other people's steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Keep reaching out your hand.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“I told you before, that there are different ways to fail. Imperfection is inevitable. That’s life. But it doesn’t sound to me like you failed at all, Eve. It sounds like your dream broke, and you’ve been picking up shattered pieces, and blaming yourself when your hands bleed.”
― Talia Hibbert, Act Your Age, Eve Brown