jes > jes's Quotes

“These days Juliette,” he said, low and warily, “the most dangerous people are the powerful white men who feel as if they have been slighted.”
― Chloe Gong, These Violent Delights

“I wondered what that was like, to hold someone’s hand. I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“He should be the Iron King, and I should be the Iron Queen. Yet Iron Demon and Iron Widow is all they'll let us be.”
― Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow

“To have and to hold, where even death cannot part us,’ Juliette whispered.
‘In this life and the next,’ Roma returned, ‘for however long our souls remain, mine will always find yours.”
― Chloe Gong, Our Violent Ends

“It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“I spent half my time loving her and the other half hiding how much I loved her.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Your problem, Werner,” says Frederick, “is that you still believe you own your life.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Do you not listen to me when I speak?” he answered shakily, his lip quirking up. “I love you. I have always loved you.”
― Chloe Gong, These Violent Delights

“You know me. Running around. Living life. Committing arson.”
― Chloe Gong, These Violent Delights

“Love was an action, an instinct, a response roused by unplanned moments and small gestures, an inconvenience in someone else’s favor.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Hers was tougher than tough love. It was brutal, industrial-strength. A sinewy love that never gave way to an inch of weakness. It was a love that saw what was best for you ten steps ahead, and didn't care if it hurt like hell in the meantime. When I got hurt, she felt it so deeply, it was as though it were her own affliction. She was guilty only of caring too much. I realize this now, only in retrospect. No one in this would would ever love me as much as my mother, and she would never let me forget it.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“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

“White women can oscillate between their gender and their race, between being the oppressed and the oppressor. Women of color are never permitted to exist outside of these constraints: we are both women and people of color and we are always seen and treated as such.”
― Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

“Women of color have to not only battle white patriarchy and that of their own culture, but must also contend with colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, and other forms of racism. Given white women have never had to deal with racial and colonial oppression, it is not surprising — though it is certainly regrettable — that so many of them still regard feminism as a movement purely concerned with gender, leaving racialized women to keep trying to draw their attention to the ways in which various oppressions affect our lives. Until white women reckon with this, mainstream Western feminism cannot be anything more than another iteration of white supremacy.”
― Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

“A white woman may well be punished for an emotional outburst when interacting with men, but if she is engaged in a terse interaction with a woman of color and she becomes emotional, by which I mean either angry or distraught, with or without actual tears, the deeply embedded notions of gender and femininity are triggered and it is the white woman who is likely to be vindicated.”
― Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color

“Perhaps that was the most perverse part of this: the inside-outness of everything, as if denial would make it go away, when it only made the pain in her chest tighten, when it only made her emotions clearer.”
― Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club

“Are you like the girls in the book too? Because I think I am.”
― Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club

“Here was her mother sitting down across from her, reaching for her hands and chafing them as if she were frozen. She felt the rub of her mother’s wedding ring against her skin, and her mother’s face swam into focus, her brown eyes full of the sharp worry of love, and Lily thought, You will never look at me like this again.”
― Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club

“It's crazy how lonely it is to be in a family.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Yolk

“Sisters never stand a chance to be friends. We're pitted against each other from the moment we are born. A daughter is a treasure. Two is a tax.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Yolk

“Marriages are the original tiny cult.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Yolk

“What's the point? The planet is on fire and everything is random.”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Yolk