:3 > :3's Quotes

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“It's called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.”
― Orson Scott Card, The Folk of the Fringe

“No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“I took a step toward her. "It is my right to reside in my own mind. It is my right," I said. "It is my right to be unsociable and it is my right to be unpleasant to be around. Do you ever listen to yourself? This is crazy, that is crazy, everything is crazy to you. By whose measure? Well, it is my right to be crazy, as you love to say so much. I have no shame. I have felt many things in my life, but shame is not among them." The volume of my voice caused me to stand on my tiptoes. I could not remember yelling like this, ever. "You may think that I have an obligation to you but I assure you that us being thrown together in this arbitrary arrangement does not cohesion make. I have never had less of an obligation to anyone in my life, you aggressively ordinary woman.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

“Things usually work out in the end."
"What if they don't?"
"That just means you haven't come to the end yet.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Remember, the enemy's gate is down.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I'm not stupid!" In Bean's experience, that was a sentence never uttered except to prove its own inaccuracy.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Shadow

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“She wasn't fine, not even close.
But she wasn't dead.
And that was a start.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Empire of Storms

“I'm going to call in old debts and promises. To raise an army of assassins and thieves and exiles and commoners.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Empire of Storms

“Sometimes, when I clean a kill, I feed Buttercup the entrails. He has stopped hissing at me.
Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest we will ever come to love.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.”
― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“Yes, frosting. The final defense of the dying.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“I wasn't going to kill him, you buffoon.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“Get up.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass

“He is not a bad man, and that, I realize suddenly, is the root of my hurt.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

“Women in pain give men confidence.”
― Sable Sorensen, Dire Bound

“Why do you want to hide it from me?'
'I'm not hiding it. It just isn't yours.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

“I once heard a story about a girl who requested something so vile from her paramour that he told her family and they had her hauled her off to a sanatorium. I don’t know what deviant pleasure she asked for, though I desperately wish I did. What magical thing could you want so badly they take you away from the known world for wanting it?”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties

“The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Cock is just another word for 'fool.' But you call someone a cunt, well..." The girl smiled. "You're implying a sense of malice there. An intent. Malevolent and self-aware. Don't think I name Consul Scaeva a cunt to gift him insult. Cunts have brains, Don Tric. Cunts have teeth. Someone calls you a cunt, you take it as a compliment. As a sign that folks believe you're not to be lightly fucked with.”
― Jay Kristoff, Nevernight