Maeve > Maeve's Quotes

“I am frequently underestimated. I think it's because I'm short.”
― Amie Kaufman, Illuminae

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

“I will accept any amount of monsters my mind wants to give me, but I will not become a monster myself.”
― Marissa Meyer, Stars Above

“We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“We were salt and sand and sea and storm.”
― Adrienne Young, Namesake

“She wept because she did not know what she wanted, and because she wanted everything.”
― Meagan Spooner, Hunted

“Is it only blood that makes a House? Or is it beliefs? What holds people together more? The red in their veins or the fire in their hearts?”
― Rebecca Ross, The Queen's Resistance

“Be wary of those who will let you apologize for who you are.”
― Rachel Griffin, The Nature of Witches

“The wolves in the woods have sharp teeth and long claws, but it's the wolf inside who will tear you apart.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“There's no such thing as complete when it comes to stories. Stories are infinite. They are as infinite as worlds.”
― Kelly Barnhill, Iron Hearted Violet

“I wondered, for the very first time, if maybe I was doing this whole thing wrong. If maybe I'd allowed myself to be blinded by my own anger to the exclusion of all else. If maybe, just maybe, I'd been so determined not to be stereotyped that I'd begun to stereotype everyone around me.”
― Tahereh Mafi, A Very Large Expanse of Sea

“How many feelings can one heart hold?... Infinite, Luna thought. The way the universe is infinite. It is light and dark and endless motion; it is space and time, and space within space, and time within time. And she knew: there is no limit to what the heart can carry.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Girl Who Drank the Moon

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“Pain doesn’t get easier. You just have to get stronger.”
― Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes

“I believe we decide our own fate. No one has the right to dictate who we are or what we become.”
― Kathryn Purdie, Burning Glass

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“We may not always have the choice we would like. But we always have a choice.”
― Signe Pike, The Lost Queen

“When you have lived a life as long as mine, you come to understand that all gods, and all stories, are different names for the same thing. Beneath it all, there is one god with many faces, but always one god. There is one story with many variations, but always the same ending.”
― Signe Pike, The Lost Queen

“I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Fairy tales give it to us straight. They tell us something profound and essential - that the woods are real, and dark, and full of wolves. That we will, at times, find ourselves hopelessly lost in them. But these tales also tell us that we are all that we need, that we have all we need - guts, smarts, and maybe a pocketful of breadcrumbs - to find our way home.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“Leaning forward, Cinder spoke very clearly. "I have a computer in my brain," she said. "So while I'm not going to tell you that I am the smartest or, by any means, the most experienced person in this room, I would suggest that no one use my youth to believe that I am also ignorant.”
― Marissa Meyer, Winter

“They were not pretty, these women. Pretty did not begin to describe them.
They were shrewd. Powerful. Wily. Proud. Dangerous.
They were strong.
There were brave.
They were beautiful.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“I think we all make mistakes. What matters is that we don’t let our mistakes make us.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“A book is made of paper but a story is a tree.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“Everyone is searching for their true selves. But everyone hides their trues selves from others.”
― Joanna Ruth Meyer, Echo North

“This is how we prepare for war, I thought as a dark peace wove between the queen and me. This is how we face the unexpected—not by our swords and our shields and our armor. Not even by the woad we paint upon our skin. We are ready because of sisterhood, because our bonds go deeper than blood. We rise for the queens of our past, and for the queens to come.”
― Rebecca Ross, The Queen's Rising

“When things come to an end in a way you didn't expect, in a way you never could have imagined, do they really come to an end? Does it mean you should keep searching, for better answers, for ones that don't keep you up at night? Or does it mean it's time to make peace?”
― Monica Hesse, Girl in the Blue Coat

“Kindness is many things,” he said. “It is gentle. Tender. Tolerant. It is born of patience and faith. And sometimes, yes, it’s dangerous. Helping a wounded animal that’s likely to lash out, standing up for someone who’s being taunted by bullies... these things are all dangerous. But to try to understand another creature, to put ourselves in their place, to help them - even when it costs us - that shows strength, Sophie, not weakness.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Poisoned