Christine > Christine's Quotes

“I only know now that the scientists are wrong.

The world is flat.

I know because I was tossed right off the edge and I've been trying to hold on for 17 years. I've been trying to climb back up for 17 years but it's nearly impossible to beat gravity when no one is willing to give you a hand.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“Hope is hugging me, holding me in its arms, wiping away my tears and telling me that today and tomorrow and two days from now I will be just fine and I'm so delirious I actually dare to believe it.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“The moon is a loyal companion.
It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human.
Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“I always wonder about raindrops.

I wonder about how they're always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. It's like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesn't seem to care where the contents fall, doesn't seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors.

I am a raindrop.

My parents emptied their pockets of me and left me to evaporate on a concrete slab.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“Hope is a pocket of possibility.
I'm holding it in my hand.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“I spent my life folded between the pages of books.
In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“Someone picked up the sun and pinned it to the sky again, but every day it hangs a little lower than the day before. It's like a negligent parent who only knows one half of who you are. It never sees how its absence changes people. How different we are in the dark.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“Killing time isn't as difficult as it sounds.

I can shoot a hundred numbers through the chest and watch them bleed decimal points in the palm of my hand. I can rip the numbers off a clock and watch the hour hand tick tick tick its final tock just before I fall asleep. I can suffocate seconds just by holding my breath. I've been murdering minutes for hours and no one seems to mind.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“My life is four walls of missed opportunities poured in concrete molds.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“And I've fallen.

So hard.

I've hit the ground. Gone right through it. Never in my life have I felt this. Nothing like this. I've felt shame and cowardice, weakness and strength. I've known terror and indifference, self-hate and general disgust. I've seen things that cannot be unseen.

And yet I've known nothing like this terrible, horrible, paralyzing feeling. I feel crippled. Desperate and out of control. And it keeps getting worse. Every day I feel sick. Empty and somehow aching.

Love is a heartless bastard.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Destroy Me

“Loneliness is a strange sort of thing.
It creeps on you, quiet and still, sits by your side in the dark, strokes by your hair as you sleep. It wraps itself around your bones, squeezing so tight you almost can't breathe. It leaves lies in your heart, lies next to you at night, leaches the light out of every corner. It's a constant companion, clasping your hand only to yank you down when you're struggling to stand up.
You wake up in the morning and wonder who you are. You fail to fall asleep at night and tremble in your skin. You doubt you doubt you doubt.
do I
don't I
should I
why won't I
And even when you're ready to let go. When you're ready to break free. When you're ready to be brand-new. Loneliness is an old friend stand beside you in the mirror, looking you in the eye, challenging you to live your life without it. You can't find the words to fight yourself, to fight the words screaming that you're not enough never enough never ever enough.
Loneliness is a bitter, wretched companion.
Sometimes it just won't let go.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“Hope.

It's like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It's a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. And it's the only thing in the world keeping me afloat.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“On the darkest days you have to search for a spot of brightness, on the coldest days you have to seek out a spot of warmth; on the bleakest days you have to keep your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give them a chance to wash out the pain in order to see fresh and clear once again.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me

“I’ve come to believe that the most dangerous man in the world is the one who feels no remorse. The one who never apologizes and therefore seeks no forgiveness. Because in the end it is our emotions that make us week, not our actions.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Destroy Me

“Hate looks like everybody else until it smiles”
― Tahereh Mafi

“Truth is a jealous, vicious mistress that never, ever sleeps.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“Sometimes I wish I never had to sleep. Sometimes I think that if I stay very, very still, if I never move at all, things will change. I think if I freeze myself I can freeze the pain. Sometimes I won’t move for hours. I will not move an inch. If time stands still nothing can go wrong.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“The Darkest Minds tend to hide behind the most unlikely faces.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Let's carpe the hell out of this diem.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“He's so busy looking inside people to find the good that he misses the knife they're holding in their hand.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Never, never, never. I am never going to forget you.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“It feels like we should do something," he said. "Like, send her off on a barge out to sea and set her on fire. Let her go out in a blaze of glory."
Chubs raised an eyebrow. "It's a minivan, not a Viking.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“When a girl cries, few things are more worthless than a boy.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“They were never scared of the kids who might die, or the empty spaces they would leave behind. They were afraid of us-the ones who lived.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Don’t be scared. Don’t let them see.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“I'm a monster, you know. I'm one of the dangerous ones.
No you aren't, he promised. Your one of us.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“That was not like riding a bike, you asshole!”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“But hey, what's life without a little adversity?"
That had to have been the fakest attempt at optimism since my fourth grade teacher tried reasoning that we were better off without the dead kids in our class because it'd mean more turns on the playground swings for the rest of us.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Maybe nothing will ever change for us,” he said. “But don’t you want to be around just in case it does?”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds

“Dreaming led to disappointment, and disappointment to a kind of depressed funk that wasn’t easy to shake. Better to stay in the gray than get eaten by the dark.”
― Alexandra Bracken, The Darkest Minds