Zoe > Zoe's Quotes

“For if there was one thing I’d learned in my life, it was that knowledge was power. Knowledge was escape. Books were thresholds, and you could cross them and leave yourself behind, or use what you found inside to transform into someone else.”
― L.R. Lam, Dragonfall

“What a world this would be, were it not held wholly and solely in the grip of stubborn old men.”
― Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Vampire

“I will love you until the sun dies. And when it does, I will love you in the darkness.”
― Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

“Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extrovert.”
― Pierce Brown, Golden Son

“Break the chains, my love.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative. There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift. Your sister may be able to see the future, but you yourself can shape it, boy. Do not forget that... there are many kinds of magic, after all.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“What is fate but coincidences in retrospect?”
― Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings

“We only die if we are forgotten. Burn bright. Burn brief. But burn.”
― Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Damned

“But you're not a weak and foolish girl.
No. I'm a fucking queen.”
― Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Vampire

“Heroes don't get happy endings. They give them to other people.”
― Stephanie Garber, Once Upon a Broken Heart

“Nice comes from the Latin word for “stupid”,’ said Griffin. ‘We do not want to be nice.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Why, he wondered, did white people get so very upset when anyone disagreed with them?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers have no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifies them.

Good. It should.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Ask me not if God exists, but why he's such a prick.”
― Jay Kristoff, Empire of the Vampire

“Trying, he thought, to express some unutterable truth about themselves. Which was that translation was impossible. That the realm of pure meaning they captured and manifested would and could not ever be known. That the enterprise of this tower had been impossible from inception. For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language. There was no candidate - not English, not French - that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No, a thousand worlds within one. And translation, a necessary endeavor however futile, to move between them.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“For anyone who has ever hoped for a second chance.”
― Stephanie Garber, A Curse for True Love

“That's just what translation is, I think. That's all speaking is. Listening to the other and trying to see past your own biases to glimpse what they're trying to say. Showing yourself to the world, and hoping someone else understands.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances that demanded it.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“He did not fear my darkness, nor pity my compassion. And the truth was, the idea of dying without knowing him completely was torturous.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Serpent and the Wings of Night

“But the truth is, death is everywhere. Death comes for the roses and the apples, it comes for the mice and the birds. It comes for us all. Why should death stop us from living?”
― V.E. Schwab, Gallant

“Faith means that it doesn't matter what happens. You can trust that somebody is watching. Trust that somebody will make it all right.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages

“That's the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“You have such a great fear of freedom, brother. It's shackling you. You've identified so hard with the colonizer, you think any threat to them is a threat to you. When are you going to realize you can't be one of them?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“But what is the opposite of fidelity?' asked Professor Playfair. He was approaching the end of his dialitic; now he needed only to draw it to a close with a punch. 'Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, it means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So, where does that leave us? How can we conclude except by acknowledging that an act of translation is always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Be selfish," he whispered. "Be brave.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“How strange,’ said Ramy. ‘To love the stuff and the language, but to hate the country.’

‘Not as odd as you’d think,’ said Victoire. ‘There are people, after all, and then there are things.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So then where does that leave us? How can we conclude, except by acknowledging that an act of translation is then necessarily always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“Never trust. Never yield. Always guard your heart.”
― Carissa Broadbent, The Serpent and the Wings of Night