Seren > Seren's Quotes

“TODD: Well, listen, Neil. I-I appreciate this concern, but I-I'm not like you.All right? You, you, you say things and people listen. I'm, I'm not like that.
NEIL: Don't you think you could be?
TODD: No! I--I, I don't know, but that's not the point. The, the, the point is that there's nothing you can do about it, so you can just butt out. I can take care of myself just fine. All right?
NEIL: No.
TODD: What do you mean, "no"?
NEIL: No.”
― Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“I know I shall probably never see him again, but I cannot bear to think that he is alive in the world and thinking ill of me.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.”
― Richard Siken

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“He kisses like Elliott Smith sings.”
― Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

“I will be girl with claws, heart bared and bruised and wanting. I am soul-shattering wolf-howl. I am lioness and hunt. I am more and enough. I am.”
― Venetta Octavia, Prelude to Light

“I can be feminine in all my rage.
I can be girl and woman, and claws with teeth.
Watch me burn.”
― Venetta Octavia

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“There are different sorts of treachery, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. She burnt a lot more than the letters that night in the backyard. I don't think she knew. In her head she was still queen, but not my queen any more, not the White Queen any more. Walls protect and walls limit. It is in the nature of walls that they should fall. That walls should fall is the consequence of blowing your own trumpet.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?”
― Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic

“I've loved you ever since I've known you, Jo, - couldn't help it, you've been so good to me, - I've tried to show it, but you wouldn't let me; now I'm going to make you hear, and give me an answer, for I can't go on so any longer." - Laurie”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”
― Earl Nightingale

“Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. We've done just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers and you.”
― Jim Henson

“You will flicker in these words
and in the words of others
for a while and then go out.

Even if I send them,
you will never get these letters.
Even if I see you again,

I will never see you again.”
― Margaret Atwood, Selected Poems 2: 1976 - 1986

“I was very often full of rage and despair. I was always lonely. In spite of all that I was and am in love with life. When I was upset I went roaming into the Pennines – all day on a jam sandwich and a bottle of milk. When I was locked outside, or the other favourite, locked in the coal-hole, I made up stories and forgot about the cold and the dark. I know these are ways of surviving, but maybe a refusal, any refusal, to be broken lets in enough light and air to keep believing in the world – the dream of escape.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“I'm happy as I am, and love my liberty too well to be in a hurry to give it up for any mortal man.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Good Wives