Molly Huff > Molly's Quotes

“I saw them all, suddenly, for just a moment, through non-Radchaai eyes, an eddying crowd of unnervingly ambiguously gendered people. I saw all the features that would mark gender for non-Radchaai—never, to my annoyance and inconvenience, the same way in each place. Short hair or long, worn unbound (trailing down a back, or in a thick, curled nimbus) or bound (braided, pinned, tied). Thick-bodied or thin-, faces delicate-featured or coarse-, with cosmetics or none. A profusion of colors that would have been gender-marked in other places. All of this matched randomly with bodies curving at breast and hip or not, bodies that one moment moved in ways various non-Radchaai would call feminine, the next moment masculine. Twenty years of habit overtook me, and for an instant I despaired of choosing the right pronouns, the right terms of address. But I didn't need to do that here. I could drop that worry, a small but annoying weight I had carried all this time. I was home.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“The gender thing is a giveaway, though. Only a Radchaai would misgender people the way you do."
I'd guessed wrong. "I can't see under your clothes. And even if I could, that's not always a reliable indicator.”
― Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice

“City folk, particularly politicians, were intimidated by small arms. They preferred to kill people with more modern weapons, like poverty and despair.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Lost Metal

“Is it so bad that I wanted to give and receive the same level of affection from my friends as everyone else? But since I liked girls, every bit of physical contact is taken as sexual. It's lonely.”
― Sonora Reyes, The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School

“The thing is,' Gwen said, muffled again against her dress, 'I think I could love a man. I just...haven't. I don't notice many people in that way. And if I could love a man, then surely I should try. It would make everything so much easier.'
'You could,' said Arthur. 'You could fall in love with a man, and know that you once liked Bridget, and neither of those things would change the other. They would both be true. But right now you do like Bridget. So I don't think you should settle for a life that denies that particular truth.”
― Lex Croucher, Gwen & Art Are Not in Love

“When a man dies from a bullet entering his chest, it's a homicide.
When a man dies from a meteorite landing on his head, it's a tragedy.
Don't use bullets. Use meteorites
Don't commit a homicide. Commit a Tragedy.
-Guy McMaster”
― Rupert Holmes, Murder Your Employer

“Men wants us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.”
― Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow

“He will not kill me. He does not get to make me a statistic.”
― Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow

“There’s no such thing as normal people, I said, a desperate flailing. “There’s just people, and some of them are miserable, and some of them are happy, and you’ve the same right to be happy as any of them—no more and no less.”
― Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate

“So. I might not deserve you. And you might forgive too much. But I’m damned glad to have you.”
― Travis Baldree, Legends & Lattes

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You'll never see, but you will know. I'll be all the poets, I'll kill them all and take each one's place in turn, and every time love's written in all the strands it will be to you.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. Listen to me. I am your echo. I would rather break the world than lose you.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I want to be a body for you. I want to chase you, find you, I want to be eluded and teased and adored; I want to be defeated and victorious—I want you to cut me, sharpen me. I want to drink tea beside you in ten years or a thousand. Flowers grow far away on a planet they’ll call Cephalus, and these flowers bloom once a century, when the living star and its black-hole binary enter conjunction.I want to fix you a bouquet of them, gathered across eight hundred thousand years, so you can draw our whole engagement in a single breath, all the ages we’ve shaped together.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“I love you and I love you and I love you, on battlefields, in shadows, in fading ink, on cold ice splashed with the blood of seals. In the rings of trees. In the wreckage of a planet crumbling to space. In bubbling water. In bee stings and dragonfly wings, in stars. In the deapths of lonely woods where I wandered in my youth, staring up - and even then you watched me. You slid back through my life, and I have known you since before I knew you.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“It’s not that I never noticed before how many red things there are in the world. It’s that they were never any more relevant to me than green or white or gold. Now it’s as if the whole world sings to me in petals, feathers, pebbles, blood.”
― Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

“Of course... I still wonder about every stranger who gives me a knowing look. About every cat who watched me too closely. I can only hope I reached her in some small way. I can only hope that if she does come back, she'll know me for who I am. A friend.”
― N.D. Stevenson, Nimona

“But you can't kill me, Lord Tyrant. I represent that one thing you've never been able to kill, no matter how hard you try. I am hope.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“Breeze strolled over to the table and chose a seat with his characteristic decorum. The portly man raised his dueling cane, pointing it at Ham. 'I see that my period of intellectual respite has come to an end.'

Ham smiled. 'I thought up a couple beastly questions while I was gone, and I've been saving them just for you, Breeze.'

'I'm dying of anticipation,' Breeze said. He turned his cane toward Lestibournes. 'Spook, drink.'

Spook rushed over and fetched Breeze a cup of wine.

'He's such a fine lad,' Breeze noted, accepting the drink. 'I barely even have to nudge him Allomantically. If only the rest of you ruffians were so accommodating.'

Spook frowned. 'Niceing the not on the playing without.'

'I have no idea what you just said, child,' Breeze said. 'So I'm simply going to pretend it was coherent, then move on.'

Kelsier rolled his eyes. 'Losing the stress on the nip,' he said. 'Notting without the needing of care.'

'Riding the rile of the rids to the right,' Spook said with a nod.

'What are you two babbling about?' Breeze said testily.

'Wasing the was of brightness,' Spook said. 'Nip the having of wishing of this.'

'Ever wasing the doing of this,' Kelsier agreed.

'Ever wasing the wish of having the have,' Ham added with a smile. 'Brighting the wish of wasing the not.'

Breeze turned to Dockson with exasperation. 'I believe our companions have finally lost their minds, dear friend.'

Dockson shrugged. Then, with a perfectly straight face, he said, 'Wasing not of wasing is.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“Women? Women are like...thunderstorms. They're beautiful to look at, and sometimes they're nice to listen to-but most of the time they're just plain inconvenient.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“Mocking a woman is like drinking too much wine. It may be fun for a short time, but the hangover is hell.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“Somehow, we'll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be. But for now, we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages

“...A man can only stumble for so long before he either falls or stands up straight.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“Never throw the first punch. If you have to throw the second, try to make sure they don't get up for a third.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Steelheart

“I ask of you your lives,” Elend said, voice echoing, “and your courage. I ask of you your faith, and your honor—your strength, and your compassion. For today, I lead you to die. I will not ask you to welcome this event. I will not insult you by calling it well, or just, or even glorious. But I will say this.
“Each moment you fight is a gift to those in this cavern. Each second we fight is a second longer that thousands of people can draw breath. Each stroke of the sword, each koloss felled, each breath earned is a victory! It is a person protected for a moment longer, a life extended, an enemy frustrated!”
There was a brief pause.
“In the end, they will kill us,” Elend said, voice loud, ringing in the cavern. “But first, they shall fear us!”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages

“I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“My dear, did you just try to prove the existence of God through the use of your cleavage?”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“We want to imagine that people are consistent, steady, stable. We define who they are, create descriptions to lock them on a page, divide them up by their likes, talents, beliefs. Then we pretend some—perhaps most—are better than we are, because they stick to their definitions, while we never quite fit ours. Truth is, people are as fluid as time is. We adapt to our situation like water in a strangely shaped jug, though it might take us a little while to ooze into all the little nooks. Because we adapt, we sometimes don’t recognize how twisted, uncomfortable, or downright wrong the container is that we’ve been told to inhabit.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“I am the one thing you can never kill. I am Hope.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“The nature of the world is that when we create something, we often destroy something else in the process.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages