Alex > Alex's Quotes

“Annabeth pressed her lips to Percy’s ear. “I love you.”
She wasn’t sure he could hear her—but if they died, she wanted those to be her last words.”
― Rick Riordan, The House of Hades

“Love is no game! It is no flowery softness! It is hard work- It demands everything from you- especially the truth. Only then does it yield results.”
― Rick Riordan, The House of Hades

“Annabeth's voice caught on the word friend. Percy was a lot more than that. Even boyfriend really didn't cover it. They'd been through so much together, at this point Percy was part of her--a sometimes annoying part, sure, but definitely a part she could not live without.”
― Rick Riordan, The House of Hades

“Annabeth?” Percy said again. “You’re planning something. You’ve got that I’m-planning-something look.”
“I don’t have an I’m-planning-something look.”
“Yeah, you totally do. Your eyebrows knit together and your lips press together and—”
“Do you have a pen?” she asked him.”
― Rick Riordan, The House of Hades

“You promised, Seaweed brain. We would not get separated! Ever again!”
― Rick Riordan, The House of Hades

“Then there was Nico di Angelo. Dang, that kid gave Leo the freaky-deakies. He sat back in his leather aviator jacket, his black T-shirt and jeans, that wicked silver skull ring on his finger, and the Stygian sword at his side. His tufts of black hair struck up in curls like baby bat wings. His eyes were sad and kind of empty, as if he’d stared into the depths of Tartarus—which he had.”
― Rick Riordan, The House of Hades

“Annabeth,” he said hesitantly, “in New Rome, demigods can live their whole lives in peace.”
Her expression turned guarded. “Reyna explained it to me. But, Percy, you belong at Camp Half-Blood. That other life—”
“I know,” Percy said. “But while I was there, I saw so many demigods living without fear: kids going to college, couples getting married and raising families. There’s nothing like that at Camp Half-Blood. I kept thinking about you and me…and maybe someday when this war with the giants is over…”
It was hard to tell in the golden light, but he thought Annabeth was blushing. “Oh,” she said…
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just…I had to think of that to keep going. To give me hope. Forget I mentioned—”
“No!” she said. “Gods, Percy, that’s so sweet.”
― Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.”
― Saul Bellow

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“You should write a book," Ron told Hermione as he cut up his potatoes, "translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Write the kind of story you would like to read. People will give you all sorts of advice about writing, but if you are not writing something you like, no one else will like it either.”
― Meg Cabot

“So what? All writers are lunatics!”
― Cornelia Funke, Inkspell

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka

“People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”
― Franz Kafka

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
― Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades

“If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.”
― Ray Bradbury

“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”
― James Michener

“One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.”
― Michael Cunningham

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.”
― Stephen King

“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
― Franz Kafka

“By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry...”
― Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians