Willow Anne > Willow Anne's Quotes

“It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”
― Ruta Sepetys, The Fountains of Silence

“We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray

“Tell me “The Subtle Briar” again,’ she asked. She knew I would still know it by heart. I whispered to her in the dark.

‘When you cut down the hybrid rose,
its blackened stump below the graft
spreads furtive fingers in the dirt.
It claws at life, weaving a raft
of suckering roots to pierce the earth.
The first thin shoot is fierce and green,
a pliant whip of furious briar
splitting the soil, gulping the light.
You hack it down. It skulks between
the flagstones of the garden path
to nurse a hungry spur in shade
against the porch. With iron spade
you dig and drag it from the gravel
and toss it living on the fire.

‘It claws up towards the light again
hidden from view, avoiding battle
beyond the fence. Unnoticed, then,
unloved, unfed, it clings and grows
in the wild hedge. The subtle briar
armors itself with desperate thorns
and stubborn leaves – and struggling higher,
unquenchable, it now adorns
itself with blossom, till the stalk
is crowned with beauty, papery white
fine petals thin as chips of chalk
or shaven bone, drinking the light.

‘Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia,
Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena,
Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda,
Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara,
Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna,
Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna,
Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziecha, Maria,
Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia.

‘When you cut down the hybrid rose
to cull and plough its tender bed,
trust there is life beneath your blade:
the suckering briar below the graft,
the wildflower stock of strength and thorn
whose subtle roots are never dead.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“I learned that you need not be born into a family to be loved by one.”
― Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours

“But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse.”
― Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours

“I wept because i had no shoes,
until i met a man who had no feet.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Is it right,” Jutta says, “to do something only because everyone else is doing it?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“While the past is unchangeable, our perceptions of it are malleable.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Wedding

“A wrongdoing doesn't give us the right to do wrong.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray

“We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we're more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Sometimes, when you win, you lose.”
― Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library

“Sometimes kindness can be delivered in a clumsy way.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray

“It’s important to remember how hard it is to ask for help,” she reminded me. “Never be impatient; all questions have value.”
― Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library

“Ignore everything else, just concentrate on the things you can change.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“The old towns, the ghost towns, no longer belong to men. The desert and the mountains have taken them back, gathered them into their arms and made them one with the trees and brush and rocks.”
― Louis L'Amour, Frontier

“Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“While wounds can be inflicted easily upon those we love, it's often much more difficult to heal them.”
― Nicholas Sparks

“Boats that stay in the harbor are safe, sweetheart, but that's not what boats were built for.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Nothing is easier for people who never do anything themselves than to criticize someone who actually makes an effort.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“But hoping," he said, "is how the impossible can be possible after all.”
― Marissa Meyer, Heartless

“Your daughter, your sister. She is salt to the sea,”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“One day at a time. One dream at a time. And one could say it’s right and one could say it’s wrong. And probably both would be right. Because life is both complicated and simple. Which is why there are cookies.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry