Sea > Sea's Quotes

“Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.”
― Hope Jahren, Lab Girl

“I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
“Patroclus,” he said. He was always better with words than I.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Always respect life. Then you'll value yours. The hard part isn't turning you into a killer. The hard part is keeping you human.”
― Gregg Hurwitz, Orphan X

“Go nowhere on a horse that fades, for your dreams will betray you.”
― Tanith Lee, Night's Master

“You, too, are a fool, earthborn, to trust in demon-kind and to ride on a mare of smoke and night. What demons love they slay in the end, and the gifts of demons are snares. Go nowhere on a horse that fades, for your dreams will betray you.”
― Tanith Lee, Night's Master

“And I will love you; for such as I am, I do not give my love lightly, but once given it is sure. Only remember this, if ever you make an enemy of me, your life shall be as dust or sand in the wind. For what a demon loves and loses he will destroy, and my power is the mightiest you are ever likely to know.”
― Tanith Lee, Night's Master

“[...] Sivesh cried one name aloud. It was the name of Azhrarn, and in that name was all the pain and loneliness and despair and accusation that any mortal throat could utter.”
― Tanith Lee, Night's Master

“The child might fear to be born and the mother to give birth, yet neither can choose otherwise when the time is come. Neither have I a choice. This is my only path.”
― Tanith Lee, Night's Master

“I do not want the lying kindness and the gifts of men, nor of other than men. I am armed now.”
― Tanith Lee, Night's Master

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“We may never speak about this again. But I hope you’ll never hold it against me that we did. I will have been a terrible father if, one day, you’d want to speak to me and felt that the door was shut or not sufficiently open.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Books want to burn,' he says. 'They go up like that because - they're unstable, memories don't want to stay...”
― Bridget Collins, The Binding

“Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose.”
― Neil Gaiman

“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

“When we hold each other, in the darkness, it doesn't make the darkness go away. The bad things are still out there. The nightmares still walking. When we hold each other we feel not safe, but better. "It's all right" we whisper, "I'm here, I love you." and we lie: "I'll never leave you." For just a moment or two the darkness doesn't seem so bad.”
― Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days

“Life without hope is hopelessly difficult but at the end hope can so easily make fools of us all.”
― Henry Marsh, Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery - as seen on 'life-changing' BBC documentary Confessions of a Brain Surgeon

“But death is not always a bad outcome, you know, and a quick death can be better than a slow one.”
― Henry Marsh, Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery