Allie > Allie's Quotes

“Get up, girl, and dress yourself. Woman must have spunks to live in this wicked world."

Christophine to Antoinette”
― Jean Rhys

“This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing.”
― Margaret Atwood, Surfacing

“As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“Nothing predates danger.”
― Maggie Smith, Good Bones

“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“This is why I didn’t want to come. I’ve got four perfectly good humans here and I didn’t want them to get killed by whatever took out DeltFall. It’s not like I cared about them personally, but it would look bad on my record, and my record was already pretty terrible.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“My eyes are open for always, my mouth is empty for always, and always will my soul reach for yours. In the land of the dead, there are only blackbirds, and I send this one to you, in the hopes that you remember me still. Light me a stick of incense, and so long as it burns, let me sit in the chamber outside your bedroom again. Until it goes out...Let me stay and be for you.”
― Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

“He saw her bright, fierce little face break into laughter when the crowd laughed. It was good. Laughter is good for the soul and all your interior works.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“The first time you see something die, you won’t know it might come back. I’m desperate for you to love the world because I brought you here.”
― Maggie Smith, Good Bones

“slow it is
a slow business

to grow a few words
to say love”
― Anselm Hollo, Maya: Works, 1959 1969

“We are humanity, Kant says. Humanity needs us because we are it. Kant believes in duty and considers remaining alive a primary human duty. For him one is not permitted to “renounce his personality,” and while he states living as a duty, it also conveys a kind of freedom: we are not burdened with the obligation of judging whether our personality is worth maintaining, whether our life is worth living. Because living it is a duty, we are performing a good moral act just by persevering.”
― Jennifer Michael Hecht, Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It

“Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed. He”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“It’s wrong to think of a construct as half bot, half human. It makes it sound like the halves are discrete, like the bot half should want to obey orders and do its job and the human half should want to protect itself and get the hell out of here. As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do. What I should do. What I needed to do.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“If people believed in eternal damnation they might not be seizing the day quite so much.”
― Kate Atkinson, Life After Life

“We seem obsessed with motivation, rallying ourselves to something beyond the life available to us right now, and we treat this motivation as if it were a major part of the history of wisdom, which it is not.”
― Jennifer Michael Hecht, The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong

“We don’t stop, we just stop being what we are and start being what? Where? What can I give you to carry there? These shadows of leaves—the lace in solace? This soft, hand-me-down darkness? What can I give you that will be of use in your next life, the one you will live without me?”
― Maggie Smith, Good Bones

“Gurathin turned to me. "So you don't have a governor module, but we could punish you by looking at you."

I looked at him. "Probably, right up until I remember I have guns built into my arms.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“When They Die We Change Our Minds About Them

When they die we change our minds about them. While they live we see the plenty hard they’re trying,to be a star, or nice, or wise, and so we do not quite believe them. When they die, suddenly they are what they claimed. Turns out, that’s what one of those looks like. The cold war over manner of manly or mission is over. Same person, same facts and acts, just now a quiet brain stem. We no longer begrudge his or her stupid luck.When they die we change our minds about them. I will try to believe while you yet breathe.”
― Jennifer Michael Hecht

“And in their corner all they had was Murderbot, who just wanted everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“This cultural obsession with weight loss doesn’t just impact our physical and mental health; it also impacts our sense of self and, consequently, our relationships with others of different sizes.”
― Aubrey Gordon, What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat

“there is no substitute for walking in the landscape itself, or turning over dusty old pages in the archives of San Antonio.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“Plato offers the amazing idea that contemplation of the way things really are is, in itself, a purifying process that can bring human beings into the only divinity there is.”
― Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“No matter what side you were on, if you had survived Gettysburg you were to be congratulated.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot
learn, feel, change, grow or love.
Chained by his certitude, he is a slave; he has forfeited his freedom.
Only the person who risks is truly free.”
― Leo Buscaglia

“Someone called, Why are you not reading from Governor Davis’s state journal? The Captain folded his newspapers. He said, Sir, you know very well why. He leaned forward over the podium. His white hair shone, his gold-rim glasses winked in the bull’s-eye lantern beam. He was the image of elderly wisdom and reason. Because there would be a fistfight here within moments, if not shooting. Men have lost the ability to discuss any political event in Texas in a reasonable manner. There is no debate, only force. In point of fact, regard the soldiers beyond the door. He slapped his newspapers into the portfolio. He”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“How was life before Pop-Tarts, Prozac and padded playgrounds? They ate strudel, took opium and played on the grass.”
― Jennifer Hecht, The Happiness Myth: The Historical Antidote to What Isn't Working Today – A Liberating Vision for Caring for Hearts, Minds, and Bodies

“She never learned to value those things that white people valued. The greatest pride of the Kiowa was to do without, to make use of anything at hand; they were almost vain of their ability to go without water, food, and shelter. Life was not safe and nothing could make it so, neither fashionable dresses nor bank accounts. The baseline of human life was courage.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“It calls itself ‘Murderbot,’” Gurathin said. I opened my eyes and looked at him; I couldn’t stop myself. From their expressions I knew everything I felt was showing on my face, and I hate that. I grated out, “That was private.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red