Vampire Bookworm > Vampire's Quotes

“I hope that Hector kills you." The breath rasps in his throat. "Do you think I do not hope the same?" he asks.”
― Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles

“Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere. The clearest summer could end in a downpour. Could end in lightning and thunder.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. “No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.”

“But what if he is your friend?” Achilles had asked him, feet kicked up on the wall of the rose-quartz cave. “Or your brother? Should you treat him the same as a stranger?”

“You ask a question that philosophers argue over,” Chiron had said. “He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else’s friend and brother. So which life is more important?”

We had been silent. We were fourteen, and these things were too hard for us. Now that we are twenty-seven, they still feel too hard.

He is half of my soul, as the poets say. He will be dead soon, and his honor is all that will remain. It is his child, his dearest self. Should I reproach him for it? I have saved Briseis. I cannot save them all.

I know, now, how I would answer Chiron. I would say: there is no answer. Whichever you choose, you are wrong.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Its easy to make frends if you let pepul laff at you.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyes—how such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Why am I always looking at life through a window?”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Only a short time ago, I learned that people laughed at me. Now I can see that unknowingly I joined them in laughing at myself. That hurts the most.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“I’m “exceptional”- a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of “gifted” and “deprived” (which used to mean “bright” and “retarded”) and as soon as “exceptional” begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. “Exceptional” refers to both ends of the spectrum, so all my life I’ve been exceptional.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“How can I make him understand that he did not create me?
He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Intimacy is the only shield against insanity. Intimacy, not knowledge. Intimacy, not power.”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

“Emotions have their effects even after you try to bully them out of existence.”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

“Kodiak is dead. The tumor Rover extracted was just a hint of how much was growing in his body.
The universe has no light in it anymore.
I will join him tonight.
Hug your Kodiak close to you.
I love you. - Ambrose #13”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

“He looks like he spends his day crushing warriors under the shield of Aeneas. Muscles band his arms and neck. Thick, lustrous hair falls in blue-black waves along his cheeks, his eyes a speckled tan, nestled deep. His olive skin is smooth and unmarred, except where thick stubble shades his jawline. Even his stubble looks like it could take me in a fight.”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

“When people assume there is no one listening who cares, they put up walls. You have many, many walls. Indirectness is one of them.”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

“We'll live," Kodiak says as he pulls himself out of the water, lying on his side and wiping water from his thick hair. "We'll get cancer in our twenties, but we'll survive at least until then."
"Was that a joke?" I ask, arranging myself next to him and wringing out the hem of my shirt.
"Yes. It was a joke, and also it was true. It is a Dimokratia kind of joke.”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

“Even my sorrow about my insignificance feels insignificant.”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Darkness Outside Us

“It arrived. The brightness between us.”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Brightness Between Us

“That as soon as we classify someone, we establish the ways in which they’re separate from us. It’s the most fundamental othering that we do.”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Brightness Between Us

“Labels are the Root of Violence,”
― Eliot Schrefer, The Brightness Between Us

“To paint something good for once, he said. And said it laughing. Young people never say anything straight. You can tell they're being honest if they hide behind a laugh.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Flowers of Buffoonery

“How cruel of you. What part of what you see here is carefree? If only you could understand the sadness of the ones who grow the delicate flowers of buffoonery, protecting them from but the slightest gust of wind and always on the verge of despair!”
― Osamu Dazai, The Flowers of Buffoonery

“Beautiful feelings make bad literature.”
― Osamu Dazai, The Flowers of Buffoonery

“This is why I will never understand how people think family is as common as blood. To me, family is breath; it’s trusting the person beside you to demand your right to air in a world that would take it from you. It’s the vulnerability of feeling someone’s chest move in a careful rhythm to give you your own back.”
― Maya MacGregor, The Many Half-Filled Lives of Sam Sylvester

“I look up and meet her eyes briefly because she is looking for neurotypical-friendly reassurance, and then I look away. “Thanks.”
― Maya MacGregor, The Many Half-Filled Lives of Sam Sylvester

“I nod, but I don’t meet her eyes, looking instead at the bookcase behind her. Neurotypicals think eye contact is reassuring, but it’s the opposite to me. So I focus on the shelf.”
― Maya MacGregor, The Many Half-Filled Lives of Sam Sylvester

“It’s not truth. It’s fear. You have to add a caveat of hate to what’s supposed to be a message of love.”
― Maya MacGregor, The Many Half-Lived Lives of Sam Sylvester