aly⋆ ̊ > aly⋆ ̊'s Quotes

“You have to prove yourself over and over, and when the glory for your most recent achievement expires, as it must, as it always will, you have to start again, but with more eyes trained on you, more people waiting for the day your talent withers, and your discipline weakens, and your charm wears away. Success is only meant to be rented out, borrowed in small doses at a time, never to be owned completely, no matter what price you're willing to pay for it.”
― Ann Liang, I Am Not Jessica Chen

“I want to get good grades. Graduate. Get a job in whichever field my strengths lie."
His brows furrow, like he doesn't quite believe me. "Not what you're passionate about?" he asks delicately.
I lift my chin. "I'm passionate about being good at things." There's a defensive edge in my voice, and Mr. Chen must hear it. He drops the subject.
"Well, all right then. I suppose I should let you go to lunch..."
"Thanks, Mr. Chen."
But as I turn to leave, he adds, very quietly, "You're still a kid, you know."
I falter. "what?"
His eyes are kind, almost sad when he looks at me. "Even if it doesn't feel that way now, you're still only a kid." He shakes his head. "you're too young to be this hardened by the world. You should be free to dream. To hope.”
― Ann Liang, If You Could See the Sun

“Descartes was wrong, you know, when he said 'To live well, you must live unseen.' To live well, you must learn to see yourself first.”
― Ann Liang, If You Could See the Sun

“Sometimes I forget that in the bigger scheme of things, it's okay to not be the best at everything. To be surrounded by people who can solve problems you can't, who are talented in different ways, who will go on to change the world.”
― Ann Liang, I Am Not Jessica Chen

“You read people’s books, and you think you know them. They’re having a conversation with you for hundreds of pages, and there’s an intimacy there that you develop on your own.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“I want to be known for the art I made, for my words and my voice, not for the mark some man left on me.”
― Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect

“We should appreciate the flower, regardless of its roots.”
― Sue Lynn Tan, Daughter of the Moon Goddess

“You'll never grow if you only do what you're good at... The most difficult things are often the most worth while.”
― Sue Lynn Tan, Daughter of the Moon Goddess

“-It's extremely cool how the words can stay the same but their meaning can change.
-Because the reader changes.
-EXACTLY”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“For one moment, it is more important to take in the spectacular than to worry about the pressing business of staying alive.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“(...) it's the constant churn, the need to keep moving keep doing keep risking and there innt no rest f'the damned, there jus' innt.”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“But if enough people think of you a certain way, it becomes true. Even if it's not true.”
― J.J. Abrams, S.

“Here's what I don't get: when you're growing up, you get told that America's all about the individual, built on individualism, you get to be who you want to be, etc. But it only goes so far.
You get out of school and you're supposed to go back to being a good little girl and find your job and fit in and follow the rules and it all makes me want to...”
― Doug Dorst, S.

“I know how much you've longed for your future to lean down and cup your face, to whisper 'don't worry, it gets better'. The truth is, it wont get better if you keep making the same mistakes. It can get better, but you must allow yourself to imagine a world in which you are better.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“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

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

“Why does that obstinate little voice in our heads torment us so? Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls – which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one’s burned tongues and skinned knees, that one’s aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that’s why we’re so anxious to lose them, don’t you think?”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“But as a friend once told me, “Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“Just because you can survive without someone doesn't mean they're unwanted.”
― Margaret Owen, Little Thieves