Zainab > Zainab's Quotes

“Per aspera ad astra. I’d heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns, to the stars.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Secrets carry weight, like lead.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“I never asked where he went, worried he wouldn’t ask me to follow.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“You were real to me. Sometimes I thought you were the only real thing.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“The future is wide and wild and full of promise, but it is precarious, too. Seize on every opportunity that comes your way and cling to it, lest it be washed back out to sea.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“I don't know, it's like I look at you and suddenly the sonnets makes sense. The good ones, anyway.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“But I stayed where I was, afraid to move toward him, afraid I might lose my footing on solid ground, detach from what had anchored me before and drift out into the void of space - a vagabond, wandering moon.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“This,” James said, when he had disappeared. “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars … as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting-on!”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Anything can feel like punishment if it’s taught poorly.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“One thing I'm sure Colborne will never understand is that I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“His voice sounded flat, wrong, as if someone had struck a false note on the piano.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“The sky was clear and quiet, stars peering curiously down at us from a wide dome of indigo. The water, too, was still, and I thought, what liars they are, the sky and the water. Still and calm and clear, like everything was fine. It wasn't fine, and really, it never would be again.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process. In learning to write, the pupil goes over with his pen what the teacher has outlined in pencil: so in reading; the greater part of the work of thought is already done for us. This is why it relieves us to take up a book after being occupied with our own thoughts. And in reading, the mind is, in fact, only the playground of another’s thoughts. So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading, and by way of relaxation devotes the intervals to some thoughtless pastime, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking; just as the man who always rides, at last forgets how to walk. This is the case with many learned persons: they have read themselves stupid.”
― arthur schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think. ”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“It’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I’m in love with him still.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“There is no comfort like complicity.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“James laughed brokenly, and I felt something deep between my lungs crack clean in two.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“One sin, I know, another doth provoke; Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“But in Shakespeare's world, passion is irresistible, not embarrassing.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“He'd never been in my house and I was self-conscious, embarrassed by it. I was painfully aware of the fact that we didn't have enough books.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Make art, make mistakes, and have no regrets.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Nothing unites men like a common enemy.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Was I not always his right-hand man, his lieutenant? Banquo or Benvolio or Oliver - little difference.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Oliver, I don’t understand,” he said. “Why?”
“You know why.” I was done pretending otherwise.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains