Julia > Julia's Quotes

“I wept because i had no shoes,
until i met a man who had no feet.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“I became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“What had human beings become? Did war make us evil or just activate an evil already lurking within us?”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“How foolish to believe we are more powerful than the sea or the sky.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Killers aren't always assassins. Sometimes, they don't even have blood on their hands.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“War is catastrophe. It breaks families in irretrievable pieces. But those who are gone are not necessarily lost.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Your daughter, your sister. She is salt to the sea,”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“I wanted to stay locked away from the pain and destruction. I didn't want to be strong. I didn't want to be the 'smart girl'. I was so very tired. I just wanted it all to be over.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“War had bled color from everything, leaving nothing but a storm of gray.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Yet amidst all that, life has spit in the eye of death.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Enough studying, Joana. Sometimes living life is more instructive than studying it.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“I knew the legends of the birds. Seagulls were the souls of dead soldiers. Owls were the souls of women. Doves were the recently departed souls of unmarried girls.

Was there a bird for the souls of people like me?”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“It's safer for you to stay with the others,' he said.
Safer? He didn't realize.
I was already dead.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“There's a saying, 'Death hath a thousand doors to let out life; I shall find one.' But the children. That's what I struggle with.' He shook his head. 'Why the children?”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“She is you, she is your mother, your father, your country. She is Poland.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“You see, fear is a hunter. It encircles us when we are unarmed and least expect it. And then we are forced to make decisions.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“The Wilhelm Gustloff was pregnant with lost souls conceived of war. They would crowd into her belly and she would give birth to their freedom. But did anyone realize? The ship was christened for a man, Wilhelm Gustloff. My father had told me about him. He had been the leader of the Nazi Party in Switzerland. He was murdered. The ship was born of death.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“The soldier stared at Ingrid. His silence was elastic, slowly curling a rope around her neck.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Can history disappear if it’s written in blood?”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I am made of memories.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“There was more to say, but for once we did not say it. There would be other times for speaking, tonight and tomorrow and all the days after that. He let go of my hand.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“As children we see happiness as a thing. A toy train sticking out of a basket or the plastic film around a slice of cake. or a photograph of a scene in which we are at the centre, all eyes on us.

As adults it gets more complicated. Happiness is success, work, a man or a woman. All vague, laborious things. Whether it's a word we use to describe our lives or not, it is mostly just that, a word.

Childhood taught us something different about happiness, Yui thought, that all you needed to do was reach out your hand in the right direction and you could grasp it.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Phone Box at the Edge of the World

“We were just about the last ones to leave. Reverend Ballou took Joseph’s hand to shake it, and Joseph said, “How much of that story is true?” Reverend Ballou considered this. “I think it all has to be true, or none of it,” he said. “The angels?” said Joseph. “Really?” “Why not?” said Reverend Ballou. “Because bad things happen,” said Joseph. “If there were angels, then bad things wouldn’t happen.” “Maybe angels aren’t always meant to stop bad things.” “So what good are they?” “To be with us when bad things happen.” Joseph looked at him. “Then where the hell were they?” he said. I thought Reverend Ballou was going to start bawling.”
― Gary D. Schmidt, Orbiting Jupiter