em > em's Quotes

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Reader, I married him.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you - you'd forget me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Faustus: Stay, Mephistopheles, and tell me, what good will
my soul do thy lord?

Mephistopheles: Enlarge his kingdom.

Faustus: Is that the reason he tempts us thus?

Mephistopheles: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.
(It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery.)”
― Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus

“There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“You can stop swimming now, Lily. We finally reached the shore.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“Till swollen with cunning, of a self-conceit,
His waxen wings did mount above his reach,
And melting heavens conspired his overthrow.”
― Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus

“Naked truths aren’t always pretty.”
― Colleen Hoover, It Ends with Us

“True love is usually the most inconvenient kind.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“She loved anyone and anything that didn't love her back, so long as it made her feel alive.”
― Lauren Weisberger, The Devil Wears Prada

“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defies our boundaries and illuminates our souls.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’
Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“My brain is my biggest enemy—always arguing my soul into a corner.”
― Quiara Alegría Hudes, Water by the Spoonful

“...and life is short, and you can only live in mediocrity so long.”
― Quiara Alegría Hudes, Water by the Spoonful

“If you are eating a shit sandwich, chances are you ordered it.”
― Quiara Alegría Hudes, Water by the Spoonful

“I'd sit there wishing I could scoop the blood out of my veins like you scoop the seeds out of a pumpkin.”
― Quiara Alegría Hudes, Water by the Spoonful

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty....A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes. His outrage grew and felt like power. For the first time he honestly wished he could work miracles.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“I don't want realism. I want magic!”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“We've had this date with each other from the beginning.”
― Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

“There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best. But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you’ll have no hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea