Nikki > Nikki's Quotes

“I feel confident I should have been a rebel Angel had the opportunity been mine.”
― John Keats

“My dear Keats go on, don't despair, collect incidents, study characters, read Shakespeare and trust in Providence.”
― Benjamin Haydon

“He wanted to say this was not erotic. But it was erotic, insofar as anything and everything is.”
― Anne Rice, Taltos I

“I have been envious of male characteristics, if not the men themselves. I'm jealous of the ease with which they seem to inhabit their professional pursuits: the lack of apologizing, of bending over backward to make sure the people around them are comfortable with what they're trying to do. The fact that they are so often free of the people-pleasing instincts I have considered to be a curse of my female existence. I have watched men order at dinner, ask for shitty wine and extra bread with a confidence I could never muster, and thought, What a treat that must be. But I also consider being female such a unique gift, such a sacred joy, in ways that run so deep I can't articulate them. It's a special kind of privilege to be born into the body you wanted, to embrace the essence of your gender even as you recognize what you are up against. Even as you seek to redefine it.
"I know that when I am dying, looking back, it will be women that I regret having argued with, women I sought to impress, to understand, was tortured by. Women I wish to see again, to see them smile and laugh and say, It was all as it should have been.”
― Lena Dunham, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned"

“Do you know, I had almost lost faith in the goddess? I almost stopped believing in Her. But I realized I had to become something. I had to take what was done to me and use it to make myself into what I wanted to be. And I wanted this. And when I called Her, the goddess came.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“Living in a castle is objectively romantic.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician King

“This was bad behavior, and she knew it. She did it because she was angry and because she disliked herself. The more she disliked herself, the more she took it out on other people, and the more she took it out on other people the more she disliked herself”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician King

“You didn't get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician King

“I don't think it's really about being bitchy or demanding or cold or calculating: those characteristics, after all, can be attached to most women with even the paltriest of evidence. I think, quite frankly, that the world simply does not care for the complicated girls, the ones who seem too dark, too deep, too vibrant, too opinionated...”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women

“All the backpedaling and backstepping that goes on with powerful women today, with Hillary Clinton saying she could have stayed home and baked cookies and blah blah blah, and then offending everybody so that she had to say that she does, in fact, *love* to make cookies, loves it almost as much as she likes to trade agricultural futures. I mean, what is that about? All this I'm really a lady, I'm really a nice girl crap- who needs it? It really is nothing more than surrender.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women

“Good and bad are not opposites, they are both just different forms of intensity.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women

“I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains — good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isn’t necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesn’t qualify either). I’m talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Don’t tell me you don’t know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves — to the point of almost parodic encouragement — we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.”
― Gillian Flynn

“He [Shelley] told me that he had had many visions lately; he had seen the figure of himself, which met him as he walked on the terrace and said to him, 'How long do you mean to be content?”
― Mary Shelley

“It is ten minutes to midnight in South Bend, but this is no fairy tale. There's no coach, and there's no prince for miles. It's late, a night with a deceptively light sky, and Fionn tends her hearth in a dark home where only a small fire burns. Her heart is angry and her man is mean.”
― Heather Fowler, People with Holes

“This beast, at which thou criest out,
Suffers not any one to pass her way
But so doth harass him, that she destroys him;

And has a nature so malign and ruthless
That never doth she glut her greedy will,
And after food is hungrier than before.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“And after he had laid his hand on mine
With joyful mien, whence I was comforted,
He led me in among the secret things.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“We're all ghosts here, you just don't look like one yet.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“I have been
Presumptuous against love, against the sky,
Against all elements, against the tie
Of mortals each to each, against the blooms
Of flowers, rush of rivers, and the tombs
Of heroes gone.”
― John Keats, Endymion

“Down the stairs again leapt Art. She whirled across the lower landing, her head full of barking cannon, towering rigging, the creak of timbers, the voice of her mother, Molly. Before her eyes floated the golden oasts of Amer Rica, Persis, and Zanzibari, dolphins springing like silver bullets from the blue mouths of the waves.

'Her father must be fetched!' shouted Miss Eeble. 'She has gone mad!'

'Sane,' remarked Art. 'Gone sane.”
― Tanith Lee, Piratica I

“She saw the different times at sea—calm blue days, raw pea-green ones, others when the skies turned black and thunderbolts blasted the masts, and the galloping waves. The ship then leaned this way, another way, seeming to want to throw herself right over and upside down. Had Art ever been frightened? Maybe only once. One of the earliest memories, this. Molly standing braced, holding Art, two or three years old, in her arms. ‘What a spectacle!’ cried Molly. ‘Look—how beautiful it is!’ And then, ‘Don’t ever be afraid of the sea. She’s the best friend out kind have got. Better than any land, however fair. Respect the sea, yes, but don’t ever think what the sea does is cruel or unjust. People are that. The sea is only herself. And this ship—she’s lucky. She’s friends with this sea. They know how to behave with each other.’ Exactly then, a great green salt wave swamped the decks. Canvas was being hauled in, Molly’s crew clutching and swinging like monkeys along the masts. Art and Molly, soaked, and Molly saying, ‘And even if we went down, don’t fear that either. Those that the sea keeps sleep among mermaids and pearls and sunken kingdoms. You wouldn’t mind that, would you, love?”
― Tanith Lee, Piratica I

“Crocodiles are easy,' Steve said. 'They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.”
― Terri Irwin, Steve & Me

“I have seen Tasmanian devils battle over a carcass. I have seen lionesses crowding a kill, dingoes on the trail of a feral piglet, and adult croc thrashing its prey to pieces. But never, in all the animal world, have I witnessed anything to match the casual cruelty of the human being.”
― Terri Irwin, Steve & Me

“My pain is ugly, Angel Juan. I feel like I have so much ugly pain,' says Witch Baby in a dream.

'Everyone does,' Angel Juan says. 'My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”
― Francesca Lia Block, Dangerous Angels

“I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year. In the winter I would choose February. I had it figured out that the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day.”
― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“She was still clutching the book.

She was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“I love you,' Buttercup said. 'I know this must come as something of a surprise to you, since all I've ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. Your eyes are like that, did you know? Well they are. How many minutes ago was I? Twenty? Had I brought my feelings up to then? It doesn't matter.' Buttercup still could not look at him. The sun was rising behind her now; she could feel the heat on her back, and it gave her courage. 'I love you so much more now than twenty minutes ago that there cannot be comparison. I love you so much more now then when you opened your hovel door, there cannot be comparison. There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my ears adore you, my knees shake with blind affection. My mind begs you to ask it something so it can obey. Do you want me to follow you for the rest of your days? I will do that. Do you want me to crawl? I will crawl. I will be quiet for you or sing for you, or if you are hungry, let me bring you food, or if you have thirst and nothing will quench it but Arabian wine, I will go to Araby, even though it is across the world, and bring a bottle back for your lunch. Anything there is that I can do for you, I will do for you; anything there is that I cannot do, I will learn to do. I know I cannot compete with the Countess in skills or wisdom or appeal, and I saw the way she looked at you. And I saw the way you looked at her. But remember, please, that she is old and has other interests, while I am seventeen and for me there is only you. Dearest Westley--I've never called you that before, have I?--Westley, Westley, Westley, Westley, Westley,--darling Westley, adored Westley, sweet perfect Westley, whisper that I have a chance to win your love.' And with that, she dared the bravest thing she'd ever done; she looked right into his eyes.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“They were beautiful shells, as white as the surf in the sea. When you held one up to your ear you could hear the sound of your best friend talking to you, even if she was a thousand miles away.”
― Alice Hoffman, Aquamarine

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees
and changing leaves.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“If I have a creed, this is it:
My god is language, written and read.
And there is no other god but this.”
― Aidan Chambers, This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn