abi > abi's Quotes

“I hope I meet lots of people with lovely eyes.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“It made me miserable that I was rapidly becoming an adult and that I was unable to do anything about it.”
― Osamu Dazai, Schoolgirl

“Someone once wrote that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. I get the same thing spending an hour with you.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“Here I am frozen, when I deserve to burn.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“Better than chocolate, being with you last night. Silly me, I thought that nothing was better than chocolate.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“Be a little kinder than you have to.”
― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

“A dreamer,” scorns her mother.

“A dreamer,” mourns her father.

“A dreamer,” warns Estele.

Still, it does not seem such a bad word.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things—she would go mad. She has gone mad.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Do not mistake this kindness. I simply want to be the one who breaks you.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“You once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn't even know there's another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“In Vietnamese, the word for missing someone and remembering them is the same: nhớ. Sometimes, when you ask me over the phone, Có nhớ mẹ không? I flinch, thinking you meant, Do you remember me?

I miss you more than I remember you.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“If you have love, even plain cold water is sweet.”
― Jung Chang, Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

“The only way to learn is to live.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?"

"Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel."

"And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“I don't see what women see in other women," I'd told Doctor Nolan in my interview that noon. "What does a woman see in a woman that she can't see in a man?"
Doctor Nolan paused. Then she said, "Tenderness.”
― Sylvia Plath

“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“We men are wretched things.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men. Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth, now the living timber bursts with the new buds and spring comes round again. And so with men: as one generation comes to life, another dies away.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man!”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!...He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. ... He has carried me off for love!...He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!...But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!...And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty...he offered it...he offered to show me the mysterious road...Only...only he rose too...and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice...for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed!...That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears... and she did not run away!...and she did not die!... She remained alive, weeping over me, weeping with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera