jesse > jesse's Quotes

“We reached for each other, and I thought of how many nights I had lain awake loving him in silence.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Sleep is cousin to death, Vasya. And both are mine.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“But I think you should be careful, Batyushka, that God does not speak in the voice of your own wishing. We have never needed saving before.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“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

“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

“Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

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

“We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“There are no bargains between lion and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“All Eli had to do was smile. All Victor had to do was lie. Both proved frighteningly effective.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“I would have come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that's what we do. We never stop fighting.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“As I could, I loved you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“I have plucked snowdrops at Midwinter, died at my own choosing, and wept for a nightingale. Now I am beyond prophecy.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“Magic is forgetting the world was ever other than as you willed it.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“Who is to say, in the end, that the three guardians of Russia are not a witch, a frost-demon, and a chaos-spirit? I find it fitting.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“I have been running through the dark, trying to save all who have need of me. I have done good and I have done evil, but I am neither. I am only myself.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“I walked off feeling an emptiness well up inside me. It seemed, for all the emptiness that it was, a presence. It made me want to run away, dive deeper into myself, into that cold desolation, to the very bottom of it, out of whatever it is that attracts us to pain, which tempts us, when we know that a complaining tooth should be left alone, to bite on it.”
― Hisham Matar, My Friends

“This, I now know, is what is meant by grief, a word that sounds like something stolen, picked out of your pocket when you least expect it. It takes a long time to learn the meaning of a word, particularly a word like that, or perhaps all words, even ones as simple as “you” or “me.”
― Hisham Matar, My Friends

“She was older and all the more beautiful, had the weary tiredness of one who, in surrendering to her life, was ennobled by it.”
― Hisham Matar, My Friends

“I remember thinking, this must be what it is like to be in love. Love as a place of rest.”
― Hisham Matar, My Friends

“Doesn’t it make you shudder to think that the heart of the universe is so cold?”
― Hisham Matar, My Friends

“I’m the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I’ve had this tendency ever since I was young, when, given a choice, I much preferred reading books on my own or concentrating on listening to music over being with someone else. I could always think of things to do by myself.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.”
― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

“I was forced to acknowledge too late, much too late, that I too had loved, that I was capable of suffering, and that I was human after all.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“I felt as if this pain would never be appeased, that it had me in its grip for ever, that it would prevent me from devoting myself to anything else, and that I was allowing it to do so. I think that is what they call being consumed with remorse.”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Death is sometimes so discreet that it steals in noiselessly, stays for only a moment and carries off its prey...”
― Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Tell me, he said, "What is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. what are they waiting for?"

"Well […] I guess people wait in order to make sure of what they feel."

"And when you have waited—-has it made you sure?”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“And with every step I took it became more impossible for me to turn back. And my mind was empty—or it was as though my mind had become one enormous, anaesthetized wound. I thought only, One day I'll weep for this. One of these days I'll start to cry.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room