Alyss > Alyss's Quotes

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Where you tend a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”
― Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Juvenile Fiction, Classics, Family

“He has a theory: When we travel, we actually take three trips. There’s the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There’s the trip you’re actually on. And then, there’s the trip you remember. “The key is to try to keep all three as separate as possible,” he says. “The key is to be present wherever you are right now.” This advice, more than any, stays with me.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“Forgiveness is a refusal to armor your own heart—a refusal to live in a constricted heart,” he said, seemingly as much to himself as to me. “Living with that openness means feeling pain. It’s not pretty, but the alternative is feeling nothing at all.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“Healing is figuring out how to coexist with the pain that will always live inside of you, without pretending it isn’t there or allowing it to hijack your day. It is learning to confront ghosts and to carry what lingers. It is learning to embrace the people I love now instead of protecting against a future in which I am gutted by their loss. Katherine’s experience and her insight sit with me. She went through something she thought she could never survive and yet here she is, surviving. “You have to shift from the gloom and doom and focus instead on what you love,” she told me before bed. “That’s all you can do in the face of these things. Love the people around you. Love the life you have. I can’t think of a more powerful response to life’s sorrows than loving.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is,” Jeanette Winterson wrote. “It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“The power of story is to heal and to sustain. And if we are brave enough to tell our own story, we realize we're not alone, again and again.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“We were learning that sometimes the only way to endure suffering is to transform it into art.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“The idea was that if you wanted to connect with someone out in the world, someone far removed from your own life, someone who maybe even seemed unknowable, you didn’t let the distance stop you—you said what the hell, and you wrote.”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“May I be awake enough to notice when love appears and bold enough to pursue it without knowing where it will end”
― Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

“Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.”
― Greg Keyes, Interstellar: The Official Movie Novelization

“My flower is ephemeral," the little prince said to himself, "and she has only four thorns to defend herself against the world. And I have left her on my planet, all alone!"
That was his first moment of regret. But he took courage once more.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“When someone shares their hopes and dreams with us, we are witnessing deep courage and vulnerability. Celebrating their successes is easy, but when disappointment happens, it’s an incredible opportunity for meaningful connection.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“There are too many people in the world today who decide to live disappointed rather than risk feeling disappointment. This can take the shape of numbing, foreboding joy, being cynical or critical, or just never really fully engaging.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“The near enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says, “I will love this person (because I need something from them).” Or, “I’ll love you if you’ll love me back. I’ll love you, but only if you will be the way I want.” This isn’t the fullness of love. Instead there is attachment—there is clinging and fear. True love allows, honors, and appreciates; attachment grasps, demands, needs, and aims to possess.”
― Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

“The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“How do I know," she said at last, "that you are what you seem to be?"
"You don't," Said he. "I don't know what I seem, to you.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“You are like a lantern swathed and covered, hidden away in a dark place. Yet the light shines; they could not put out the light. They could not hide you.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“my heart told me incontrovertibly that neither gender could go far without the other. So, in my story, neither the woman nor the man can get free without the other.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“...You have knowledge, and I have skill, and between us we have..."
"We have the Ring of Erreth-Akbe."
"Yes, that. But I thought also of another thing between us. Call it trust... That is one of its names. It is a very great thing. Though each of us alone is weak, having that we are strong, stronger than the Powers of the Dark.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“He was one whose power was akin to, and as strong as, the Old Powers of the earth; one who talked with dragons, and held off earthquakes with his word. And there he lay asleep on the dirt, with a little thistle growing by his hand. It was very strange. Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed. The glory of the sky touched his dusty hair, and turned the thistle gold for a little while.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“I was dying of thirst when you gave me water, yet it was not the water alone that saved me. It was the strength of the hands that gave it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“After a pause she said, "I see your magic is not good only for large things."
"Hospitality," he said, "kindness to a stranger, that's a very large thing.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“She had not realized how very different people were, how differently they saw life. She felt as if she had looked up and suddenly seen a whole new planet hanging huge and populous right outside the window.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan

“Ellen had said that her mother was afraid of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big. The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel. ”
― Lois Lowry, Number the Stars

“The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. "And they lived happily ever after,”
― Lois Lowry, Number the Stars

“That's all that brave means - not thinking about the dangers. Just thinking about what you must do. Of course you were frightened. I was too, today. But you kept your mind on what you had to do.”
― Lois Lowry, Number the Stars

“I came across an account of a young man named Kim Malthe-Bruun, who was eventually captured and executed by the Nazis when he was only twenty-one years old. I read his story as I had read many others, turning the pages, skimming here and there: this sabotage, that tactic, this capture, that escape. After a while even courage becomes routine to the reader. Then, quite unprepared, I turned the page and faced a photograph of Kim Malthe-Bruun. He wore a turtleneck sweater, and his thick, light hair was windblown. His eyes looked out at me, unwavering on the page. Seeing him there, so terribly young, broke my heart.”
― Lois Lowry, Number the Stars