Cécile > Cécile's Quotes

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”
― Josephine Hart, Damage

“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“You forget all of it anyway. First, you forget everything you learned-the dates of the Hay-Herran Treaty and Pythagorean Theorem. You especially forget everything you didn't really learn, but just memorized the night before. You forget the names of all but one or two of your teachers, and eventually you'll forget those, too. You forget your junior class schedule and where you used to sit and your best friend's home phone number and the lyrics to that song you must have played a million times. For me, it was something by Simon & Garfunkel. Who knows what it will be for you? And eventually, but slowly, oh so slowly, you forget your humiliations-even the ones that seemed indelible just fade away. You forget who was cool and who was not, who was pretty, smart, athletic, and not. Who went to a good college. Who threw the best parties Who could get you pot. You forget all of them. Even the ones you said you loved, and even the ones you actually did. They're the last to go. And then once you've forgotten enough, you love someone else.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
― W.B. Yeats

“Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”
― Claude Monet

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I took joy in the things that made me happy.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”
― Roald Dahl

“Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”
― Neil Gaiman, M Is for Magic

“Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie. Yet all around you, timekeeping is ignored. Birds are not late. A dog does not check its watch. Deer do not fret over passing birthdays. an alone measures time. Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out.”
― Mitch Albom, The Time Keeper

“Work hard, know your shit, show your shit, and then feel entitled. Listen to no one except the two smartest and kindest adults you know, and that doesn't always mean your parents. If you do that, you will be fine.”
― Mindy Kaling, Why Not Me?

“I'm the kind of person who becomes silent when I get scared, because I hope Death will not notice me if I am very still and very quiet. It has worked well so far.”
― Mindy Kaling, Why Not Me?

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”
― Carrie Fisher

“And she finds it difficult to believe—that a person would love her even when she isn't trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy.”
― Margaret Atwood

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Je vois personne sur la route", dit Alice.
"Comme je voudrais avoir d'aussi bons yeux", remarqua le roi d'un ton amer. "Voir Personne! Et à cette distance encore! Moi, tout ce dont je suis capable de voir, sous cette lumière, c'est des gens!”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“I had a dream I put my hands inside my chest and held my heart to try to keep it still.”
― Mariko Tamaki, Skim

“This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?”
― Marguerite Yourcenar

“someone will remember us
I say
even in another time”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“Tu peux être tranquille. Il reste du limpide en toi. En une seule vie tu n'as pas pu tout souiller.”
― Henri Michaux, Poteaux d'angle

“J'aimerais que mon père ait été un requin
Qui eût déchiré quarante baleiniers
(Et dans leur sang j'aurais appris à nager)”
― Heiner Müller, Hamletmachine and Other Texts for the Stage

“I love you, Gretchen Lang. You are my reflection and my shadow and I will not let you go. We are bound together forever and ever! Until Halley’s Comet comes around again. I love you dearly and I love you queerly and no demon is bigger than this!”
― Grady Hendrix, My Best Friend's Exorcism

“Life doesn’t care what you want, other people don’t care what you want. All that matters is what you do.”
― Grady Hendrix, Horrorstör

“She could decide how she was going to be. She had a choice. Life could be an endless series of joyless chores, or she could get totally pumped and make it fun. There were bad things, and there were good things, but she got to choose which things to focus on. Her mom focused only on the bad things. Abby didn’t have to.”
― Grady Hendrix, My Best Friend's Exorcism

“She had nothing. Except her music.”
― Grady Hendrix, We Sold Our Souls

“For Abby, "friend" is a word whose sharp corners have been worn smooth by overuse. "I'm friends with the guys in IT," she might say, or "I'm meeting some friends after work."

But she remembers when the word "friend" could draw blood. She and Gretchen spent hours ranking their friendships, trying to determine who was a best friend and who was an everyday friend, debating whether anyone could have two best friends at the same time, writing each other's names over and over in purple ink, buzzed on the dopamine high of belonging to someone else, having a total stranger choose you, someone who wanted to know you, another person who cared that you were alive.”
― Grady Hendrix, My Best Friend's Exorcism