Seandel Edwards > Seandel's Quotes

“To survive, you must tell stories.”
― Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before

“The heart can get really cold if all you've known is winter.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“I lived in pain because I chose to live in pain. Somewhere along the line, I fell in love with the idea of tragedy, the idea that I was destined to live a tragic life. I had this romantic idea about the life of a writer and what he was supposed to suffer. [...:] Somehow I made my own pain a kind of god.”
― Benjamin Alire Saenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“Okay is just a word I use so I won't have to talk about what's inside.
Okay is a word that means I am going to keep my secrets.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“Summertime. It was a song. It was a season. I wondered if that season would ever live inside of me.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Last Night I Sang to the Monster

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Excessive caution destroys the soul and the heart, because living is an act of courage, and an act of courage is always an act of love.”
― Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra

“I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

“Hate and love be closer cousin than like and dislike.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“I live my own life and nurse my own wounds. It's not the best way to live. But it's the way I am.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

“Bad feeling is a country no woman want to visit. So they take good feeling any which way it come. Sometime that good feeling come by taking on a different kind of bad feeling.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“It is a fine line, in all of us, between civilization and savagery. To any who think they would never cross it, I can only say, if you have never known what it is to be utterly betrayed and abandoned, you cannot know how close it is.”
― Jacqueline Carey

“I am not lucky. You know what I am? I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard. Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass.”
― Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

“Don’t let what he wants eclipse what you need. He is very dreamy,” she says. “But he is not the sun. You are.”
― Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

“Lucky implies I didn’t do anything. Lucky implies something was given to me. Lucky implies that I was handed something I did not earn, that I did not work hard for. Gentle reader, may you never be lucky. I am not lucky. You know what I am? I am smart, I am talented, I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way and I work really, really hard. Don’t call me lucky. Call me a badass.”
― Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

“Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams. Fleeting, ephemeral. Pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change.”
― Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

“I belong deeply to myself.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

“To my daughter I will say, when the men come, set yourself on fire.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

“Sad people have the gift of time, while the world dizzies everyone else; they remain stagnant, their bodies refusing to follow pace with the universe. With these kind of people everything aches for too long, everything moves without rush, wounds are always wet.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

“Apathy is the same as war, it all kills you, she says. Slow like cancer in the breast or fast like a machete in the neck.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth

“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark.”
― Warsan Shire, Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

“I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you're young and asleep. Look at all these borders foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate...I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck; I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.”
― Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth