Bervinder Kaur > Bervinder's Quotes

“Even the best iron grows brittle with too much beating”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Every loss is unprecedented. You can’t ever know someone else’s hurt, not really—just like touching someone else's body isn’t the same as having someone else’s body.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Even the most beautiful nymph is largely useless, and an ugly one would be nothing, less than nothing. She would never marry or produce children. She would be a burden to her family, a stain upon the face of the world. She would live in the shadows, scorned and reviled. But a monster,” he said, “she always has a place. She may have all the glory her teeth can snatch. She will not be loved for it, but she will not be constrained either. So whatever foolish sorrow you harbor, forget it. I think it may be said that you improved her.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But there was no wound she could give me that I had not already given myself.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You feeling scared?"
"Kinda."
"Of what?"
"It's not like that. The sentence doesn't have, like, an object. I'm just scared.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“I get that nothing lasts. But why do I have to miss everybody so much?”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“It's not fair," I said. "It cannot be."

"Those are two different things," my grandmother said.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“When you're on a Ferris wheel all anyone ever talks about is being on the Ferris wheel and the view from the Ferris wheel and whether the Ferris wheel is scary and how many more times it will go around. Dating is like that. Nobody who's doing it ever talks about anything else. I have no interest in dating.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Timidity creates nothing.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But he was a harp with only one string, and the note it played was himself.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The grudges of gods are as deathless as their flesh.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Does it hurt?' I nodded. 'You know Sekou Sundiata, in a poem, he said the most important part of the body 'ain't the heart or the lungs or the brain. The biggest, most important part of the body is the part that hurts.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“The truth is, men make terrible pigs.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It is funny,” she said, “that even after all this time, you still believe you should be rewarded, just because you have been obedient. I thought you would have learned that lesson in our father’s halls. None shrank and simpered as you did, and yet great Helios stepped on you all the faster, because you were already crouched at his feet.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Witches are not so delicate.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung. Even after all that, it can fail, as gods do not.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“We are sorry, we are sorry.

Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Being vulnerable is asking to get used.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“I asked her how she did it once, how she understood the world so clearly. She told me that it was a matter of keeping very still and showing no emotions, leaving room for others to reveal themselves.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“How many of us would be granted pardon if our true hearts were known?”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“My father died suddenly, but also across the years. He was still dying, really - which meant I guess that he was still living, too.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“He was another knife I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“A golden cage is still a cage.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I don’t like to throw the L-word
around; it’s too good and rare a feeling to cheapen with overuse.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But of course I could not die. I would live on, through each scalding moment to the next. This is the grief that makes our kind choose to be stones and trees rather than flesh.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You are my favorite person. I want to be buried next to you. we'll have a shared tombstone. It'll read, 'Holmesy and Daisy: They did everything together, except the nasty.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“You are wise,” he said.

“If it is so,” I said, “it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe