Anju > Anju's Quotes

“The last-page ache. The deep breath in after you’ve set the book aside.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Sometimes, even when you start with the last page and you think you know everything, a book finds a way to surprise you.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn't chosen.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“If you're always aiming for perfection, you won't make anything at all.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“There is a time for any fledgling artist where one's taste exceeds one's abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“Survival is insufficient.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“First we only want to be seen, but once we’re seen, that’s not enough anymore. After that, we want to be remembered.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Pandemics don’t approach like wars, with the distant thud of artillery growing louder every day and flashes of bombs on the horizon. The arrive in retrospect, essentially. It’s disorienting. The pandemic is far away and then it’s all around you with seemingly no intermediate step.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“Memories are always bent retrospectively to fit individual narratives”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“There is exquisite lightness in waking each morning with the knowledge that the worst has already happened.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“This is the strange lesson of living in a pandemic: life can be tranquil in the face of death.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility

“One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“Grief is an impossible meal, so we cut it up into little pieces, dress it in ritual, and take it like a pill.”
― S.J. Sindu, Marriage of a Thousand Lies

“Silence is the rule. Words are complications, sharp edges that cut up our tongues. We keep them in with walls of teeth, preserve the peace.”
― S.J. Sindu, Marriage of a Thousand Lies

“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Reading should be an enjoyable experience, not a chore.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Reading lets us live in someone else’s shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Every writer I know feels this way about someone else. Writing is such a solitary activity. You have no assurance that what you’re creating has any value, and any indication that you’re behind in the rat race sends you spiraling into the pits of despair. Keep your eyes on your own paper, they say. But that’s hard to do when everyone else’s papers are flapping constantly in your face.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“One of the biggest issues with mainstream feminist writing has been the way the idea of what constitutes a feminist issue is framed. We rarely talk about basic needs as a feminist issue. Food insecurity and access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. Instead of a framework that focuses on helping women get basic needs met, all too often the focus is not on survival but on increasing privilege. For a movement that is meant to represent all women, it often centers on those who already have most of their needs met.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“Poverty is an apocalypse in slow motion, inexorable and generational.”
― Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot

“You did the right thing," Manthara told me. "No matter what is said about you, Kaikeyi, remember that you did the right thing. You are not wicked."
"Then why do I feel wicked?" I whispered.
"Because those who are good question themselves. Because those who are good always wonder if there was a better way, a way that could have helped more and hurt less. That feeling is why you are good.”
― Vaishnavi Patel, Kaikeyi

“It is not weak to avoid war,” I said, and my voice broke. Tears pricked at my eyes, and I let them. “It is the strongest thing you could do, to avoid unnecessary bloodshed.”
― Vaishnavi Patel, Kaikeyi

“If a woman crafted by the gods themselves could be consigned to this fate, what hope was there for a woman born of a woman?”
― Vaishnavi Patel, Kaikeyi

“Imagine the places you grew up, the places you studied, places that belonged to your people, burned. But I should stop pretending that I know you. Perhaps you do not have to imagine. Perhaps your library, too, went up in smoke.”
― V.V. Ganeshananthan, Brotherless Night