Z > Z's Quotes

“Sometimes I am very clever but most of the time I am not. I have been a good person sometimes, and a bad person at others. Sooner or later I will die. But before I do, I will try—I will try very hard—to make it count.”
― R.F. Kuang, Katabasis

“If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
― Marjane Satrapi

“You know," she says, "if you'd asked me before we left Midgard how I thought I was going to die, shoved down the corpse hole for sex crimes wouldn't have been at the top of my list.”
― Edward Ashton, Mickey7

“You're some kind of thief, then?"
"That a very narrow-minded way of looking at it. I prefer to think of myself as a merchant of delicate tasks.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The City of Brass

“TB in the twenty-first century is not really caused by a bacteria that we know how to kill. TB in the twenty-first century is really caused by those social determinants of health, which at their core are about human-built systems for extracting and allocating resources. The real cause of contemporary tuberculosis, is for lack of a better term, us.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“But we can choose a different world. In fact, we will choose a different world. The world will be different a generation from now. The question is whether we will look back in gratitude at the virtuous cycles or in horror at the vicious ones.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“Bel,” she said helplessly, around the fire in her throat. “Queen of ducks and angels. You shall have poems written to you with a quill on fire. You shall have songs sung to you by enchanted harps. Whole branches of grammar will be invented only to praise you.” “Ysabel Hawthorn,” she said, and she could not keep the heat from her voice, “demand better than to be worshipped by a crumb.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots

“You bet on whether or not I kissed your wife?" Ali was aghast. "What is wrong with the two of you?" When his brother and sister only cackled harder, he drew up. "I hate you. "I hate you both.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Empire of Gold

“I know how much you've longed for your future to lean down and cup your face, to whisper 'don't worry, it gets better'. The truth is, it wont get better if you keep making the same mistakes. It can get better, but you must allow yourself to imagine a world in which you are better.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“If you are surprised that, so soon after a secret agent tried to kill me, I was wondering whether the man with whom I’d had sex liked liked me, remember that being in love is a form of blunt-force trauma. I was concussed with love for him. I bent my head to the cudgel.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time