Olivia > Olivia's Quotes

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“You examine me, Miss Eyre", said he. "Do you think me handsome?"
I should have deliberated, have replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I was aware: "No, sir.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it - as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips - it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, 'the waters came into my soul; I snack in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods over-flowed me”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I have for the first time found what I can truly love–I have found you. You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort--no struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time--for he would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He DID love me--no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me--it is what no man besides will ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one hour- -suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next- -or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all, and to burst with boldness and good-will into the silent sea of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, weather male or female, till I had passed the out-works of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearth-stone.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“And I am a hard woman, -impossible to put off.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“[...] I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people. I must enjoy them now; don't recall either my mind or body to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I felt how, if I were his wife, this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Jane: Mr. Rochester, if ever I did a good deed in my life-if ever I thought a good thought-if ever I prayed a sincere and blameless prayer-if ever I wished a righteous wish-I am rewarded now. To be your wife is, for me, to be as happy as I can be on earth.
Mr. Rochester: Because you delight in sacrifice.
Jane: Sacrifice! What do I sacrifice? Famine for food, expectation for content. To be privileged to put my arms round what I value-to press my lips to what I love-to repose on what I trust: is that to make a sacrifice? If so, then certainly I delight in sacrifice.”
― Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

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

“I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest - blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character - perfect concord is the result.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“Loneliness is a strange sort of thing.
It creeps on you, quiet and still, sits by your side in the dark, strokes by your hair as you sleep. It wraps itself around your bones, squeezing so tight you almost can't breathe. It leaves lies in your heart, lies next to you at night, leaches the light out of every corner. It's a constant companion, clasping your hand only to yank you down when you're struggling to stand up.
You wake up in the morning and wonder who you are. You fail to fall asleep at night and tremble in your skin. You doubt you doubt you doubt.
do I
don't I
should I
why won't I
And even when you're ready to let go. When you're ready to break free. When you're ready to be brand-new. Loneliness is an old friend stand beside you in the mirror, looking you in the eye, challenging you to live your life without it. You can't find the words to fight yourself, to fight the words screaming that you're not enough never enough never ever enough.
Loneliness is a bitter, wretched companion.
Sometimes it just won't let go.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“You sick piece of shit," Adam says to him, his voice low, measured.
"Such unfortunate language." Warner shakes his head. "Only those who cannot express themselves intelligently would resort to such crude substitutions in vocabulary.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“But he grins, so brilliantly, not even paying attention. “I love it when you say my name,” he says. “I don’t even know why.”
“Warner isn't your name,” I point out. “Your name is *****.”
His smile is wide, so wide. “God, I love that.”
“Your name?”
“Only when you say it.”
“*****? Or Warner?”
His eyes close. He tilts his head back against the wall. Dimples.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“just as I began drafting my plans, my son came to me and begged me not to kill you. Just you.” He stops. Looks up. “He actually begged me not to kill you.” Laughs again.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“Fine.” Anderson points the gun at my head again. “I’ll do it then.” “Shoot her,” Warner says, “and I will put a bullet through your skull.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“This time I am a force.
A deviation of human nature.
I am living, breathing proof that nature is officially screwed, afraid of what it’s done, what it’s become.
And I’m stronger. I’m angrier.
I’m ready to do something I’ll definitely regret and this time I don’t care. I’m done being nice. I’m done being nervous. I’m not afraid of anything anymore.
Mass chaos is in my future.

And I’m leaving my gloves behind.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“We’re running out of time, he said.

As if time were the kind of thing you could run out of, as if it were measured into bowls that were handed to us at birth and if we ate too much or too fast or right before jumping into the water then our time would be lost, wasted, already spent.

But time is beyond our finite comprehension. It’s endless, it exists outside of us; we cannot run out of it or lose track of it or find a way to hold on to it. Time goes on even when we do not.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“I hear Warner laugh.
I see him smile.
It's the kind of smile that transforms him into someone else entirely, the kind of smile that puts stars in his eyes and a dazzle on his lips and I realize I've never seen him like this before. I've never seen his teeth--so straight, so white, nothing less than perfect. A flawless, flawless exterior for a boy with a black, black heart. It's hard to believe there's blood on the hands of the person I'm staring at. He looks soft and vulnerable--so human. His eyes are squinting from all his grinning and his cheeks are pink form the cold.
He has dimples.
He's easily the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And I wish I'd never seen it.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“I take aim at his chest. Try to remember where the heart
is.
Not quite to the left. Not quite in the center.
Just—there.
Perfect.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“hell is empty
and all the devils are here”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“Because it's so hard to be kind to the world when all you've ever felt is hate. Because it's so hard to see goodness in the world when all you've ever known is terror.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“People can think whatever they like....I don't desire their validation.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me

“I clench my fists and try not to scream and I tuck my friends in my heart and
revenge
I think
has never looked so sweet.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me

“Because the more I discover about him, the fewer excuses I have to push him away. He's unraveling before me, becoming something entirely different; terrifying me in a way I never could've expected.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me