Lily > Lily's Quotes

“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”
― Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence

“I have my mother’s mouth and my father’s eyes; on my face they are
still together.”
― Warsan Shire

“When my father would yell at me, I told myself someday I'd use it in a book.”
― Paula Danziger

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
― Mark Twain

“To die, it's easy. But you have to struggle for life.”
― Art Spiegelman, Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
― Robert Frost

“It should have been done by now, the punch, but he seemed to be trapped inside it. He was the boy, the blow, the counter, the flaring anger that drove it all.
This lived in him. This punch, the first time his father had ever hit him, was always being thrown somewhere in his head.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“I see boats moving on the sea.
Their sails, like wings of what I see,
Bring me a vague inner desire to be
Who I was without knowing what it was.
So all recalls my home self, and, because
It recalls that, what I am aches in me.”
― Fernando Pessoa, I Have More Souls Than One

“Late into the night I write and the pages of my notebook swell from all the words I’ve pressed onto them.
It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

“Tú dices que todo esto
es culpa de mi boca.
Porque tenía hambre,
porque era callada.
pero ¿y la boca tuya?
Cómo tus labios son grapas
que me perforan rápido y fuerte.
Y las palabras que nunca dije
quedan mejor muertas en mi lengua
porque solamente hubieran chocado
contra la puerta cerrada de tu espalda.
Tu silencio amuebla una casa oscura.
Pero aun a riesgo de quemarse,
la mariposa nocturna siempre busca la luz”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

“But what is the opposite of fidelity?' asked Professor Playfair. He was approaching the end of his dialitic; now he needed only to draw it to a close with a punch. 'Betrayal. Translation means doing violence upon the original, it means warping and distorting it for foreign, unintended eyes. So, where does that leave us? How can we conclude except by acknowledging that an act of translation is always an act of betrayal?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel

“The origins of the word 'anger' were tied closely to physical suffering. 'Anger' was first an 'affliction', as meant by the Old Icelandic angr, and then a 'painful, cruel, narrow' state, as meant by the Old English enge, which in term came from the Latin angor, which meant 'strangling, anguish, distress'. Anger was a chokehold. Anger did not empower you. It sat on your chest; it squeezed your ribs until you felt trapped, suffocated, out of options. Anger simmered, then exploded. Anger was constriction, and the consequent rage a desperate attempt to breathe.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves- in their depravity- design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“And empty words are evil.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“The blade itself incites to deeds of violence.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Why are you so beautiful, do you think? So hungry? So able to bend the wills of those around you? You are like the death flowers that grow rampant in your wake: lovely to look at, intoxicating even, but get too close and you will soon learn that there is something rank beneath. That’s what beauty often is, in nature. A warning. A disguise.”
― Krystal Sutherland, House of Hollow

“What you don’t understand,” she said to me once when I told her how dangerous it was, “is that I am the thing in the dark.”
― Krystal Sutherland, House of Hollow

“We were sisters. We felt each other’s pain. We caused each other’s pain. We knew the smell of each other’s morning breath. We made each other cry. We made each other laugh. We got angry, pinched, kicked, screamed at each other. We kissed, on the forehead, nose on nose, butterfly eyelashes swept against cheeks. We wore each other’s clothes. We stole from each other, treasured objects hidden under pillows. We defended each other. We lied to each other. We pretended to be older people, other people. We played dress up. We spied on each other. We possessed each other like shiny things. We loved each other with potent, fervent fury. Animal fury. Monstrous fury.”
― Krystal Sutherland, House of Hollow

“I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“READER, I RAN the fuck away.”
― Naomi Novik, A Deadly Education

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling stupid in the way I’m sorry always feels stupid when you mean it.”
― Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate

“I opened the door expecting to find something really horrible inside, and I did: eight freshmen, all of whom turned and stared at me like a herd of small and especially pitiful deer about to be mown down by a massive lorry.”
― Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate

“Lots of us up for first run today,” Alfie said, in the bright sort of way that someone might say, Well, looks like rain, doesn’t it! when it’s sheeting down and you’ve taken shelter under an awning with five people who’ve all got knives drawn, and you’re quietly reaching into your pocket for a handgun.”
― Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate

“Mum would tell me I could be sorry for both of them, to which I’d say she could be sorry for both of them, but I had a more limited supply of sympathy and had to ration it.”
― Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate

“All of magic essentially involves sneaking something you want past reality while it’s distracted and looking the other way.”
― Naomi Novik, The Golden Enclaves

“they were binary stars, trapped in each other’s gravitational field and easily diminished without the other’s opposing force”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“I know exactly what shape she takes up in the universe,' he pleaded in explanation. 'If anyone can recognize her, it's me.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six