emily > emily's Quotes

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
― Albert Camus

“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
― Andre Gide, Autumn Leaves

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

“We're all just songs in the end. If we are lucky.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end.”
― George R.R. Martin

“I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“And what would humans be without love?"
RARE, said Death.”
― Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

“I'd rather be a rising ape than a falling angel.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

“There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.”
― Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith

“She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?'
'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.”
― Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

“Nothing has to be true forever. Just for long enough.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Truth: Stage Adaptation

“Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.”
― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

“The stories never said why she was wicked. It was enough to be an old woman, enough to be all alone, enough to look strange because you have no teeth. It was enough to be called a witch. If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince"... was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long"... well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories don't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told...”
― Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

“We are the sum of all we have done added to the sum of all that has been done to us.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“When love is not madness it is not love.”
― Pedro Calderon de la Barca

“So? You think people stop talking to you when they are dead?”
― Mal Peet, Tamar

“We are who we are. Sometimes, no matter how much someone might want to, they can’t escape that.”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“I love you for who you are, not who the world thinks you should be.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“I’m a wild girl from a cursed line of women. I paw at the ground and run under the moon. I like the feel of my own body. I’m not a slut or a nympho or someone who’s just asking for it. And if I talk too loud it’s just that I’m trying to be heard.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens