Nicole > Nicole's Quotes

“Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.”
― Brandon Mull, Fablehaven

“We humans are conflicted beings. Our beliefs don't always harmonize with our instincts, and our behavior doesn't always reflect our beliefs. ... We wage war between the person we are and the person we hope to become.”
― Brandon Mull

“Choices determine character.”
― Brandon Mull, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

“Excruciating agony makes me cranky.”
― Brandon Mull, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

“We all posses different gifts and abilities. How we use those gifts determines who we are.”
― Brandon Mull, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

“....there is a difference between hearing and listening. You can't always help what you hear. But you can control what holds your interest, what you choose to dwell on.”
― Brandon Mull, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

“I was vanquished by a deer!'
A giant magical flying deer with fangs,' Seth said, parroting a description Gavin had shared earlier.
That sounds a little better,' Warren conceded. 'Seth is in charge of my tombstone.”
― Brandon Mull, Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary

“The curse of mortality. You spend the first portion of your life learning, growing stronger, more capable. And then, through no fault of your own, your body begins to fail. You regress. Strong limbs become feeble, keen senses grow dull, hardy constitutions deteriorate. Beauty withers. Organs quit. You remember yourself in your prime, and wonder where that person went. As your wisdom and experience are peaking, your traitorous body becomes a prison.”
― Brandon Mull, Fablehaven

“Making mistakes is part of learning to choose well. No way around it. Choices are thrust upon us, and we don't always get things right. Even postponing or avoiding a decision can become a choice that carries heavy consequences. Mistakes can be painful-sometimes they cause irrevocable harm-but welcome to Earth. Poor choices are part of growing up, and part of life. You will make bad choices, and you will be affected by the poor choices of others. We must rise above such things.”
― Brandon Mull, Keys to the Demon Prison

“Some imagine the difference between heaven and hell to be a matter of geography. Not so. The difference is much more evident in the individuals who dwell there.”
― Brandon Mull, Keys to the Demon Prison

“break the rules pay the price”
― Brandon Mull, Fablehaven

“Can you see the power emotion has to distort our outlook? Makes you wonder, did you have a bad day, or did you make it a bad day.”
― Brandon Mull, Rise of the Evening Star

“Patience mimics the power of infinity.”
― Brandon Mull, Rise of the Evening Star

“... If we don't tell strange stories, when something strange happens we won't believe it.”
― Shannon Hale, The Goose Girl

“You're better than seven years of food. You're better than windows. You're even better than the sky.”
― Shannon Hale, Book of a Thousand Days

“I thought you had forgotten me.”
“I have spent my life remembering you.”
― Meredith Ann Pierce, The Son of Summer Stars

“Love Forever

If I were the trees ...
I would turn my leaves to gold and scatter them toward the sky so they would circle about your head and fall in piles at your feet...
so you might know wonder.

If I were the mountains ...
I would crumble down and lift you up so you could see all of my secret places, where the rivers flow and the animals run wild ...
so you might know freedom.

If I were the ocean ...
I would raise you onto my gentle waves and carry you across the seas to swim with the whales and the dolphins in the moonlit waters,
so you might know peace.

If I were the stars ...
I would sparkle like never before and fall from the sky as gentle rain,
so that you would always look towards heaven and know that you can reach the stars.

If I were the moon ...
I would scoop you up and sail you through the sky and show you the Earth below in all its wonder and beauty,
so you might know that all the Earth is at your command.

If I were the sun ...
I would warm and glow like never before and light the sky with orange and pink,
so you would gaze upward and always know the glory of heaven.

But I am me ...
and since I am the one who loves you, I will wrap you in my arms and kiss you and love you with all of my heart,
and this I will do until ...
the mountains crumble down ...
and the oceans dry up ...
and the stars fall from the sky ...
and the sun and moon burn out ...

And that is forever.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“Literature has the power to change lives, minds, and hearts.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“Just when we think we have our own stories figured out, heroes arise in the most unexpected places.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“But as a wise and great teacher once explained so patiently, all good stories - stories that touch your soul, stories that change your nature, stories that cause you to become a better person from their telling-these stories always contain truth.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“Child, unless you are opening a dictionary, you start at the book's opening page and you read the story through. If it's terribly dreadful, then just put it down and move on. What I will not tolerate is reading ahead. It's not fair to the reader or to the author. If they meant to have their books read backwards, they would surely have written them that way!”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“While almost everything that surrounds us in life gets old and wears out, stories, like our very souls, don't age.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”
― Olin Miller

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“In the morning when Mrs. Pollifax awoke she realized at once that a fateful day was beginning. She lay and thought about this dispassionately, almost wonderingly, because to every life there eventually came a moment when one had to accept the fact that the shape, the pattern, the direction of the future was entirely out of one's hands, to be decided unalterably by chance, by fate or by God. There was nothing to do but accept, and from this to proceed, doing the very best that could be done.”
― Dorothy Gilman, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

“I think there should be a rule that everyone in the world should get a standing ovation at least once in their lives.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“Kinder than is necessary. Because it's not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“Courage. Kindness. Friendship. Character. These are the qualities that define us as human beings, and propel us, on occasion, to greatness.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honor heroes after they've died. They're like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honor the pharaohs. Only instead of being made of stone, they're made out of the memories people have of you.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder

“Now that I look back, I don't know why I was so stressed about it all this time. Funny how sometimes you worry a lot about something and it turns out to be nothing.”
― R.J. Palacio, Wonder