Artemisjane > Artemisjane's Quotes

“we become the stories we tell ourselves”
― Michael Cunningham, A Home at the End of the World

“You can see when someone's been hurt the way I was. It's obvious. Something changes in their eyes; pain becomes their center, even when they try to hide it.”
― Cheryl Rainfield, Scars

“Sometimes,
you don't wake up.
But if you happen
to, you know things
will never be
the same.”
― Ellen Hopkins, Impulse

“My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know.”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

“There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

“... all the tears women shed, they leave no mark on the world ...”
― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon

“No one ever wins a war, and wars are never over.”
― Louisa Young, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You

“But our hatred is almost indistinguishable from our love.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these pavements are shells, bones and silence.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“I exist only in the soles of my feet and in the tired muscles of my thighs. We have been walking for hours it seems. But where? I cannot remember.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“The window was all sky without colour. The house had lost its shelter. It was night before roads were made, or houses. It was the night that dwellers in caves had watched from some high place among rocks. Then the curtain rose. They spoke.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“Empty, empty, empty; silent, silent, silent. The room was a shell, singing of what was before time was; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold, holding the still, distilled essence of emptiness, silence.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“Friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“No, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“Tell me a story, Pew.

What kind of story, child?
A story with a happy ending.
There’s no such thing in all the world.
As a happy ending?
As an ending.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

“There it is; the light across the water. Your story. Mine. His. It has to be seen to be believed. And it has to be heard. In the endless babble of narrative, in spite of the daily noise, the story waits to be heard.


Some people say that the best stories have no words. They weren't brought up to Lighthousekeeping. It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid. The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues. The true things are too big or too small, or in any case is always the wrong size to fit in the template called language.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

“We are lucky, even the worst of us, for daylight comes.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

“I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“What sex are you?”
Doesn’t matter does it? After all that’s your problem.”
If I keep you, what will happen?”
You’ll have a difficult, different time.”
Is it worth it?”
That’s up to you.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“What is it about intimacy that makes it so very disturbing?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“She reached the group. Eileen had been crying. She wiped clumsily at her cheeks as Polly joined them, and then smiled at her. "Are you ready?" Eileen asked.

No, Polly thought. "Yes."

"Are you certain?" Colin said. "I know how hard this must be for you. We haven't a lot of time, but we've enough for you to say goodbye, if there's anyone else you need to--"

I love you, Polly thought.”
― Connie Willis, All Clear

“We tell stories. We tell stories to pass the time, to leave the world for a while, or go more deeply into it. We tell stories to heal the pain of living.”
― Niall Williams, History of the Rain

“Hope is treacherous, but how can you live without it?”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“She gave me a dirty look. Then she broke into the bubbly champagne laugh. She turned and ran, limping but steady. She laughed over her shoulder, letting out the line as I held the kite above my head.

"Run with me, Rose," she cried.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

“We are a sensational team”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“We make a sensational team.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“Perhaps when it comes to it, no one is just the worst thing they ever did.”
― M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans