Saima Ahmad > Saima's Quotes

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

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

“Every writer I know feels this way about someone else. Writing is such a solitary activity. You have no assurance that what you’re creating has any value, and any indication that you’re behind in the rat race sends you spiraling into the pits of despair. Keep your eyes on your own paper, they say. But that’s hard to do when everyone else’s papers are flapping constantly in your face.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Writing is the closest thing we have to real magic. Writing is creating something out of nothing, is opening doors to other lands.
Writing gives you power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much. To stop writing would kill me. I'd never be able to walk through a bookstore without fingering the spines with longing, wondering at the lengthy editorial process that got these titles on shelves and reminiscing about my own. And I'd spend the rest of life curdling with jealousy every time someone like Emmy Cho gets a book deal, every time I learn that some young up-and-comer is living the life I should be living.

Writing has formed the core of my identity since I was a child. After Dad died, after Mom withdrew into herself, and after Rory decided to forge a life without me, writing gave me a reason to stay alive. And as miserable as it makes me, I'll cling to that magic for as long as I live.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“Knowledge always has the potential to be dangerous. It is a more powerful weapon than any sword or spell.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns

“You like this place?"

"Of course I do. It has books in it.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns

“She now understood that the world wasn’t kind to young women, especially when they behaved in ways men didn’t like, and spoke truths that men weren’t ready to hear.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns

“You belonged in the library, as much as any book.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn't stop for anybody.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog

And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo

And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's

and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it

Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"

because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint

And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed

when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.


Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A

and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went

And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her

but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly

That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem

And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think

he could reach the kitchen.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“It's strange because sometimes, I read a book, and I think I am the people in the book.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse.
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.
End of fucking story.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it's not faith, right?”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“I wish someone had told me that love isn’t torture. Because I thought love was this thing that was supposed to tear you in two and leave you heartbroken and make your heart race in the worst way. I thought love was bombs and tears and blood. I did not know that it was supposed to make you lighter, not heavier. I didn’t know it was supposed to take only the kind of work that makes you softer. I thought love was war. I didn’t know it was supposed to… I didn’t know it was supposed to be peace.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“Sometimes things that appear very different on the surface are actually exactly the same at their core.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Inheritance Games

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If the ending is this painful, I don’t know if this was worth it all.”
― Dustin Thao, You've Reached Sam

“We are two parts of a song. He is the music. I am the words.”
― Dustin Thao, You've Reached Sam

“What are you reading, my dear? A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“The world keeps moving, no matter what happens to you.”
― Dustin Thao, You've Reached Sam

“It's weird to be waiting for someone to die. After a while, it starts to feel like you're rooting for death, just so the whole dying process can finally end. And this death seemed to last forEVER. It was AGONY.”
― Tyler Feder, Dancing at the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir

“Some demeaned it as “bumming around at home,” while others glorified it as “work that sustains life,” but none tried to calculate its monetary value. Probably because the moment you put a price on something, someone has to pay.”
― Cho Nam-Joo, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982