Miriam S > Miriam's Quotes

“Oh, calm down, once you’ll find out that, in truth, you can only change as much as you allow yourself to change, you’ll learn to accept it.”
― Catherine A. Sobol, Memories of the Fallen Prince

“A home isn’t a place, it’s this strange tingly feeling in your gut when something just... feels right. When you can do things you like, when everything you see, hear, feel, and smell is not obstructive and irritating but pleasant. When you have someone with you who loves you and who’ll be with you through it all. That’s a much better kind of home, I think.”
― Catherine A. Sobol, Trials of the Fallen Prince

“He had been compelled to adapt, to learn, and to change, but not to change who he was.”
― Catherine A. Sobol, Memories of the Fallen Prince

“Fly you high.”
― Suzanne Collins, Gregor the Overlander Box Set

“Well, I've spent a lot of time in your libraries at night," said Ripred.
"You come up and read books?" asked Gregor.
"Read them, eat them, whatever mood strikes me," he said.”
― Suzanne Collins

“I suppose, but not in the way you see it. I mean, love is an illusion. My kind of love is respect. Because love, no matter how much people say it’s beautiful, it gives you a weak spot." Astra looked her straight in the eyes. "And when you live like I've lived, you don't have time for love, you can’t have that weakness. All the love I’ve ever gotten was a reminder to keep working hard, to keep doing what I’m told. When you are who I am, you'll find that love is just a fairytale to keep people compliant. That’s all it’s ever done for me. Not everyone gets a happy ending.”
― Sera Amoroso, Torsion

“There is magic in this sad, hard world. A magic stronger than fate, stronger than chance. And it is seen in the unlikeliest of places.
By a hearth at night, as a girl leaves a bit of cheese for a hungry mouse.
In a slaughter yard, as the old and infirm, the weak and discarded, are made to matter more than money.
In a poor carpenter's small attic room, where three sisters learned that the price of forgiveness is forgiving.
And now, on a battlefield, as a mere girl tries to turn the red tide of war.
It is the magic of a frail and fallible creature, one capable of both unspeakable cruelty and immense kindness. It lives inside every human being ready to redeem us. To transform us. To save us. If we can only find the courage to listen to it.
It is the magic of the human heart.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“They cut away pieces of me," she whispered in the darkness. "But I handed them the knife.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“This is a dark tale. A grim tale.
It's a tale from another time, a time when wolves waited for girls in the forest, beasts paced the halls of cursed castles, and witches lurked in gingerbread houses with sugar-kissed roofs.
That time is long gone.
But the wolves are still here and twice as clever. The beasts remain. And death still hides in a dusting of white.
It's grim for any girl who loses her way.
Grimmer still for a girl her loses herself.
Know that it's dangerous to stray from the path.
But it's far more dangerous not to.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“This word, the people in it- my mother, Tantine- they sort us. Put us in crates. You are an egg. You are a potato. You are a cabbage. They tell us who we are. What we will do. What we will be."
"Because they're afraid. Afraid of what we could be." Tavi said.
"But we let them do it!" Hugo said angrily. "Why?"
"Tavi gave him a rueful smile. "Because we're afraid of what we could be, too.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“Stop burdening the gods. Stop cursing the devil. They will make no path for you. They gave you their dark gifts: reason and will. Now you must make your own way.
What's done is done. Whether to you, or by you, and you cannot change it.
But what's not done is not done.
And there, both hope and hazard lie. Believe that you can make your way. Or don't. Either way you are right. Every war is different, yet each battle is the same. The enemy is only a distraction. The thing you are fighting against, always, is yourself.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“There is magic in this sad, hard world. A magic stronger than fate, stronger than chance. And it is seen in the unlikeliest of places....It lives inside every human being ready to redeem us. To transform us. To save us. If we can only find the courage to listen to it.
It is the magic of the human heart.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“The skin-and-bones dog who shows up at your door. The broken-winged bird you nurse back to health. The kitten you find crying at the side of the road.
You think you're saving them, don't you?
Ah, child. Can't you see?
They're saving you.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“Can’t you make yourself likeable? Can’t you even try?” Something shifted in Tavi then. She was always so flippant, trailing sarcasm behind her like a duchess trailing furs. But not this time. Hugo had pierced her armor and blood was dripping from the wound. “Try for whom, Hugo?” she repeated, her voice raw. “For the rich boys who get to go to the Sorbonne even though they’re too stupid to solve a simple quadratic equation? For the viscount I was seated next to at a dinner who tried to put his hand up my skirt through all five courses? For the smug society ladies who look me up and down and purse their lips and say no, I won’t do for their sons because my chin is too pointed, my nose is too large, I talk too much about numbers?” “Tavi …” Isabelle whispered. She went to her, tried to put an arm around her, but Tavi shook her off. “I wanted books. I wanted maths and science. I wanted an education,” Tavi said, her eyes bright with emotion. “I got corsets and gowns and high-heeled slippers instead. It made me sad, Hugo. And then it made me angry. So no, I can’t make myself likeable. I’ve tried. Over and over. It doesn’t work. If I don’t like who I am, why should you?”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“Should you ever decide, in those small dark hours, to hang yourself, well, that is your choice. But don’t hunt for the rope until morning. By then you’ll find a much better use for it.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“That’s what we do with our pain,” she said, watching the butterfly rise. “We make it into something beautiful.”
“We make it into something meaningful,” said the diva.
“We make it matter,” whispered the actress.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“I could solve all the Diophantine equations, extend Newton’s work on infinite series, complete Euler's analysis of prime numbers, and it wouldn’t matter.” She looked at Isabelle. “Ella is the beauty. You and I are the ugly stepsisters. And so the world reduces us, all three of us, to our lowest common denominator.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“The worst day above ground is better than any day under it.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“What's done is done. Whether to you, or by you, and you cannot change it.
But what's not done is not done.
And there, both hope and hazard lie.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“Call a girl pretty once, and all she wants, forevermore, is to hear it again.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“She never forgot the day she'd met him, or how his friends had told her to be more than pretty. She never forgot Elizabeth, Yennenga, Abhaya Rani. She wore his gold coin on a chain around her neck until the day she died. But the thing she treasured most was the memory of his smile, a smaile that was a wink and a dare. A wild road on a windy night. A kiss int he dark.
A smile that had given her all she'd ever wanted-a chance.
A chance to be herself.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“Isabelle had cut off her toes, but sometimes she could still feel them. Maman had cut out her heart. Sometimes, she could still feel that, too.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“Elizabeth walked through the path they’d cleared and up to the towering book. She kicked the cover with a well-shod foot. It slammed shut. Then she dipped her brush into the bucket, crossed out the word history, dipped the brush again, and wrote HER STORY in its place.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“I’m always doing things I can’t do. Otherwise, I’d never get to do them.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“Sometimes it’s easier to say that you hate what you can’t have rather than admit how badly you want it.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“…if these mortals only knew, if they had the merest understanding of the grave, and of the eternity they will spend lying in it, they would eat chocolate for breakfast, caviar for lunch, and sing arias as they slopped the pigs.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“The stomach is easily satisfied. It's the hunger in our hearts that kills us.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep. I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister