Aseel > Aseel's Quotes

“Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through you fingers. So much time you can waste it.
But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“That's the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“You are", he says, "the absolute worst idea I've ever had.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Oh my God, I thought you were getting into international relations or something.”
“I mean, technically—”
“If you finish that sentence, I’m gonna spend tonight in jail.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of a partner with whom they will share it with, whom the American people will hold beside them in hearts and memories and history books. America: He is my choice.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“In an hour, every person in America will be able to look at a screen and see their First Son and his boyfriend.
And, across the Atlantic, almost as many will look up over a beer at a pub or dinner with their family or a quiet night in and see their youngest prince, the most beautiful one, Prince Charming.
This is it. October 2, 2020, and the whole world watched, and history remembered.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Hey, have I told you lately that you're brave? I still remember what you said to that little girl in the hospital about Luke Skywalker. 'He's proof that it doesn't matter where you come from or who your family is.' Sweetheart, you're proof too.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“But the first time I saw you. Rio. I took that down to the gardens. I pressed it into the leaves of a silver maple and recited it to the Waterloo Vase. It didn’t fit in any rooms.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“He wants to set himself on fire, but he can’t afford for anyone to see him burn.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“There is no time to reallocate the turkeys.” Without missing a beat, he blurts out, “Bring them to the house.” “Where? Are you hiding a turkey habitat up your ass, son? Where, in our historically protected house, am I going to put a couple of turkeys until I pardon them tomorrow?” “Put them in my room. I don’t care.” She outright laughs. “No.” “How is it different from a hotel room? Put the turkeys in my room, Mom.” “I’m not putting the turkeys in your room.” “Put the turkeys in my room.” “No.” “Put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room—” That night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets. THEY KNOW, he texts Henry. THEY KNOW I HAVE ROBBED THEM OF FIVE-STAR ACCOMMODATIONS TO SIT IN A CAGE IN MY ROOM, AND THE MINUTE I TURN MY BACK THEY ARE GOING TO FEAST ON MY FLESH.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“It's not one of the posed shots- it's one he didn't even realize had been taken, one he definitely didn't think would be released. He should have given the photographer more credit. He managed to capture the moment right when Henry cracked a joke, a candid, genuine photo, completely caught up in each other, Henry's arm around him and his own hand reaching up to grasp for Henry's on his shoulder.

The way Henry's looking at him in the picture is so affectionate, so openly loving, that seeing it from a third person perspective almost makes Alex want to look away, like he's staring into the sun. He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn't bright enough.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“What are we even defending here, Philip? What kind of legacy? What kind of family, that says, we’ll take the murder, we’ll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we’ll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you’re a bloody poof? That’s beyond our sense of decorum! I’ve bloody well had it. I’ve sat about long enough letting you and Gran and the weight of the damned world keep me pinned, and I’m finished. I don’t care. You can take your legacy and your decorum and you can shove it up your fucking arse, Philip. I’m done.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“A queen
offers her hand to be kissed,
& can form it into a fist
while smiling the whole damn time.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“Fight until you can’t breathe, & if you have to forfeit, you forfeit smiling, make them think you let them win.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, Clap When You Land

“Before that she hadn’t realized how fragile happiness was, how if you were careless, you could knock it over and shatter it.”
― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

“The things that go unsaid are often the things that eat at you—whether because you didn't get to have your say, or because the other person never got to hear you and really wanted to.”
― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

“It would disappear forever from her memory of Lydia, the way memories of a lost loved one always smooth and simplify themselves, shedding complexities like scales.”
― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

“When a long, long time later, he stares down at the silent blue marble of the earth and thinks of his sister, as he will at every important moment of his life. He doesn't know this yet, but he senses it deep down in his core. So much will happen, he thinks, that I would want to tell you.”
― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

“Thinking about history makes me wonder how I’ll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Adam finally sat down on one of the pews. Laying his cheek against the smooth back of it, he looked at Ronan. Strangely enough, Ronan belonged here, too, just as he had at the Barns. This noisy, lush religion had created him just as much as his father's world of dreams; it seemed impossible for all of Ronan to exist in one person. Adam was beginning to realize that he hadn't known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him.
The scent of Cabeswater, all trees after rain, drifted past Adam, and he realized that while he'd been looking at Ronan, Ronan had been looking at him.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“I know when I'm awake and when I'm asleep," Ronan Lynch said.
Adam Parrish, curled over himself in a pair of battered, greasy coveralls, asked, "Do you?"
"Maybe I dreamt you," he said.
"Thanks for the straight teeth, then," Adam replied.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Blue Lily, Lily Blue

“A floorboard cracked; knuckles tapped once on the open door. Adam looked up to see Niall Lynch standing in the doorway. No, it was Ronan, face lit bright on one side, in stark shadow on the other, looking powerful and at ease with his thumbs tucked in the pockets of his jeans, leather bracelets looped over his wrist, feet bare.
He wordlessly crossed the floor and sat beside Adam on the mattress. When he held out his hand, Adam put the model into it.
“This old thing,” Ronan said. He turned the front tyre, and again the music played out of it. They sat like that for a few minutes, as Ronan examined the car and turned each wheel to play a different tune. Adam watched how intently Ronan studied the seams, his eyelashes low over his light eyes. Ronan let out a breath, put the model down on the bed beside him, and kissed Adam.
Once, when Adam had still lived in the trailer park, he had been pushing the lawn mower around the scraggly side yard when he realized that it was raining a mile away. He could smell it, the earthy scent of rain on dirt, but also the electric, restless smell of ozone. And he could see it: a hazy gray sheet of water blocking his view of the mountains. He could track the line of rain travelling across the vast dry field towards him. It was heavy and dark, and he knew he would get drenched if he stayed outside. It was coming from so far away that he had plenty of time to put the mower away and get under cover. Instead, though, he just stood there and watched it approach. Even at the last minute, as he heard the rain pounding the grass flat, he just stood there. He closed his eyes and let the storm soak him.
That was this kiss.
They kissed again. Adam felt it in more than his lips.
Ronan sat back, his eyes closed, swallowing. Adam watched his chest rise and fall, his eyebrows furrow. He felt as bright and dreamy and imaginary as the light through the window.
He did not understand anything.
It was a long moment before Ronan opened his eyes, and when he did, his expression was complicated. He stood up. He was still looking at Adam, and Adam was looking back, but neither said anything. Probably Ronan wanted something from him, but Adam didn’t know what to say. He was a magician, Persephone had said, and his magic was making connections between disparate things. Only now he was too full of white, fuzzy light to make any sort of logical connections. He knew that of all the options in the world, Ronan Lynch was the most difficult version of any of them. He knew that Ronan was not a thing to be experimented with. He knew his mouth still felt warm. He knew he had started his entire time at Aglionby certain that all he wanted to do was get as far away from this state and everything in it as possible.
He was pretty sure he had just been Ronan’s first kiss.
“I’m gonna go downstairs,” Ronan said.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven King

“I don't think-"
"Clearly. Why start now?”
― Leigh Bardugo, Siege and Storm

“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Poppy War