Ree > Ree's Quotes

“If I'm lightning, then what are you?”
Already I can imagine Ace teasing me but instead he smiles and says, “I'm thunder. I'll follow you wherever you go.”
― Tashie Bhuiyan, Counting Down with You

“Mother, do you grieve?
Know that I will return to you. I will be a flutter in the leaves above where you sit, cooking ruti on the stove. I will be the stray cloud which shields you from the days of sun. I will be the thunder that wakes you before rain floods the room.
When you walk to the market, I will return to you as footprint on the soil. At night, when you close your eyes, I will appear as impress on the bed.”
― Megha Majumdar, A Burning

“They say it's good to let your grudges go, but I don't know, I'm quite fond of my grudge. I tend it like a little pet.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“Falling in love was easy.anyone could fall. It was holding on that was tricky”
― Liane Moriarty, The Husband's Secret

“Many years ago I would have been asking why is this happening? But now I am knowing that there is no use asking these questions. In life, many things are happening for no reason at all.”
― Megha Majumdar, A Burning

“Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Who says you cannot hold the moon in your hand?

Tonight when the stars come out and the moon rises in the velvet sky, look outside your window, then raise your hand and position your fingers around the disk of light.

There you go . . . That was easy!”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Don't compare her to sunshine and roses when she's clearly orchids and moonlight.”
― Melody Lee, Moon Gypsy

“The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Be the moon in somebody's night. Be the yusr (ease), in somebody's usr (hardship).”
― Yasmin Mogahed

“The shit is *not* the shit (this was Mo's mantra,) the *pigeon* is the shit.”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“There was no one in the world that was ever as critical or could make me feel as hideous as my mother, but there was no one, not even Peter, who ever made me feel as beautiful.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“To be a loving mother was to be known for a service, but to be a lovely mother was to possess a charm all your own.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“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

“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

“-’Tell me’, he said, ‘who gives better offerings, a miserable man or a happy one’?

-’A happy one, of course.’

-’Wrong. A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy yo a pure-white yearling calf. If he can afford it, he will buy you a hundred’.

-’But surely, I said, you have to reward him eventually. Otherwise he will stop offering’.

-’Oh, you would be surprised how long he will go on. But yes, in the end, it’s best to give him something. Then he will be happy again. And you can start over.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“There's a Palestine that dwells inside all of us, a Palestine that needs to be rescued: a free Palestine where all people regardless of color, religion, or race coexist; a Palestine where the meaning of the word "occupation" is only restricted to what the dictionary says rather than those plenty of meanings and connotations of death, destruction, pain, suffering, deprivation, isolation and restrictions that Israel has injected the word with.”
― Refaat Alareer, Gaza Writes Back

“I've always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.”
― David Benioff, City of Thieves

“God save us from people who mean well.”
― Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

“Can't fail if I don't try."
...
"You're absolutely right. You'd regret trying and failing. But I'll do you one better. If you don't try, give it all you've got, you'll regret the hell out of never knowing if you would have succeeded.
...
"Because regret haunts you for the rest of your life," Sewanee chimed in from the cheap seats. She hadn't intended to say anything, but as soon as she felt the answer it was out of her mouth. She caught Marilyn's eye. Her mother smiled sadly at her. "It's like a ghost that refuses to leave your house."

Stu bugged his eye. "Why's it gotta leave? What, you think you can get through life avoiding regret? Avoiding failure?" He laughed. "Spoiler alert" life is regret, life is failure. But like that ghost, you learn to live with it. Because failure makes success matter.”
― Julia Whelan, Thank You for Listening

“Take the risk. Fail. And let regret come along for the ride. A passenger, not the driver.”
― Julia Whelan, Thank You for Listening

“Spoiler alert: life is regret, life is failure. But like that ghost, you learn to live with it. Because failure makes success matter.”
― Julia Whelan, Thank You for Listening

“How wonderful it is to have a place to return to.”
― Eiko Kadono, Kiki's Delivery Service

“Reading isn’t a privilege, sir. I believe we all have the right to leave our problems and escape into another world, if only through the written word.”
― Chris Whitaker, All the Colors of the Dark

“What good were humans without their habitual dissatisfaction? It was their defining trait.”
― Saad Hossain, The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday

“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks.

The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“liberals have a despondency problem: fluent in the language of grievance and bumbling in the language of repair.”
― Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America

“As the sociologist Gerald Davis has put it: Our grandparents had careers. Our parents had jobs. We complete tasks.”
― Matthew Desmond, Poverty, by America