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“She'd laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Good men don't become legends," he said quietly.
"Good men don't need to become legends." She opened her eyes, looking up at him. "They just do what's right anyway.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“Vin isn't…like other women."
Tindwyl raised an eyebrow, her voice softening slightly.
"I think that the more women you come to know, Your Majesty, the more you'll find that statement applies to all of them.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension

“If you give up what you want most for what you think you should want more, you'll end up miserable.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages

“There has to be a balance, Vin," Elend said. "Somehow, we'll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be." He sighed. "But for now," he said, nodding to the side, "we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages

“& so what–if my feathers
are burning. I
never asked for flight.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“I didn't know the cost
of entering a song - was to lose
your way back.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.”
― Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

“Desire is no light thing.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“Then a miracle occurred in the form of a plate of sandwiches.
Geryon took three and buried his mouth in a delicious block of white bread filled with tomatoes and butter and salt.
He thought about how delicious it was, how he liked slippery foods, how slipperiness can be of different kinds.
I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided. Things good on the inside.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“Not touching but joined in astonishment as two cuts lie parallel in the same flesh.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“How does distance look?" is a simple direct question. It extends from a spaceless within to the edge of what can be loved.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“But since this earth began,
cruel fate has cursed all women.
I look on Đạm Tiên's mossy tomb,
and see my own, in days to come.”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“See the fierce power of a poem.
Learn how words can leap across the years.
She is my sister, though I am alive and she is dead.”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“Across his shoulder is a bag stuffed with wind and moonlight, which is what the world calls poetry.”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“Losing your lover is a little death:
but she who thinks nothing of her own life
cares even less for the loss of love.
She is a raindrop. She does not mind whether she falls
into a mandarin's garden or a farmer's ditch.
She is a blade of young grass that feels grateful
for three months of spring rain.”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“Kiều says: 'Mother, I am just a girl
and I can never repay what you have done for me.
But in this unjust world,
clear water turns dirty
while the muck calls itself clean.
Though I live a hundred years
I will carry you all in my heart.”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“How can a man's words be empty as the wind?”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“Liquid music pours out of that moon-bowl:
gentle consolation for a maimed soul.
Hoạn's heart is lulled by the lilting sound
and, just for a moment, her hard face softens.”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“He sees her eyebrow in the arc of the moon;”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“They speak of the past and the future
and keep repeating the same tender words
as if they have an ocean of them.”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“I am nobody. I am a woman,' says Kiều.”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“Because you love me, I will play for you.
I will play a new lament.”
― Nguyễn Du, The Tale of Kiều

“the hours
plink past like water from a window a/c. we sweat it out,
teach ourselves to wait. silently, lazily, collapse happens.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“I once had a thousand desires,
But in my one desire to know you
all else melted away.
The pure essence of your being
has taken over my heart and soul.
Now there is no second or third,
only the sound of your sweet cry.
Through your grace I have found
a treasure within myself.
I have found the truth of the Unseen world.
I have come upon the eternal ecstasy.
I have gone beyond the ravages of time.
I have become one with you!
Now my heart sings,
“I am the soul of the world.”
― Rumi, Rumi: In the Arms of the Beloved

“Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”
― Clarice Lispector, A Hora da Estrela

“I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.”
― Clarice Lispector

“You don't understand music: you hear it. So hear me with your whole body.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Stream of Life

“And it's inside myself that I must create someone who will understand.”
― Clarice Lispector