Trish > Trish's Quotes

“If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?”
― Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“But how,” said Charles, who was close to tears, “how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’
Henry lit a cigarette. “I prefer to think of it,” he had said, “as redistribution of matter.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Love doesn't conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“I understood why she did it. At that moment I knew why people tagged graffiti on the walls of neat little houses and scratched the paint on new cars and beat up well-tended children. It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have.”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“To know I was beautiful in his eyes made me beautiful. ”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“Oleander time, she said. Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind. ”
― Janet Fitch, White Oleander

“So I take Peter’s hand; I put it on my heart. I tell him, “You have to take good care of this, because it’s yours.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“I say, “In the contract we said we wouldn’t break each other’s hearts. What if we do it again?” Fiercely he says, “What if we do? If we’re so guarded, it’s not going to be anything. Let’s do it fucking for real, Lara Jean. Let’s go all in. No more contract. No more safety net. You can break my heart. Do whatever you want with it.”
― Jenny Han, P.S. I Still Love You

“This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes they consume us completely.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Adversity is like a strong wind. I don't mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see. ”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“I had to wonder if men were so blinded by beauty that they would feel privileged to live their lives with an actual demon, so long as it was a beautiful demon.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“What happens when people open their hearts?"
"They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment. ”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. ”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I have a million things to talk to you about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a "Reserved" sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I'd never see her again.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“When you feel homesick,’ he said, ‘just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch