MJ > MJ's Quotes

“...when your child dies, you feel everything you'd expect to feel, feelings so well-documented by so many others that I won't even bother to list them here, except to say that everything that's written about mourning is all the same, and it's all the same for a reason - because there is no read deviation from the text. Sometimes you feel more of one thing and less of another, and sometimes you feel them out of order, and sometimes you feel them for a longer time or a shorter time. But the sensations are always the same.

But here's what no one says - when it's your child, a part of you, a very tiny but nonetheless unignorable part of you, also feels relief. Because finally, the moment you have been expecting, been dreading, been preparing yourself for since the day you became a parent, has come.

Ah, you tell yourself, it's arrived. Here it is.

And after that, you have nothing to fear again.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I have become lost to the world
In which I otherwise wasted so much time
It means nothing to me
Whether the world believes me dead
I can hardly say anything to refute it
For truly, I am no longer a part of the world.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“For the first time, he truly understood what Nietzsche had meant when he had yammered about looking into abysses. Not only had the abyss looked into him, it had noted his name, address and shoe size.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Fear Institute

“Instead he gave Cabal his most professional pat on the shoulder. It was his best pat, the one that said, You have my most sincere albeit non-specific sympathies. It was all he could do.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, The Fear Institute

“Your entire sense of self-worth is predicated upon your belief that you matter, that you matter to the universe. But you don't. Because we are the ants.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, We Are the Ants

“Depression isn't a war you win. It's a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest. It's one bloody fray after another.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, We Are the Ants

“He said that life boils down to standing in line to get shit dropped on your head. Everyone's got a place in the queue, you can't get out of it, and just when you start to congratulate yourself on surviving your dose of shit, you discover that the line is actually circular.”
― Scott Lynch, The Republic of Thieves

“You’ve the presence of a mouse fart in a high wind. Stand aside, and try not to catch fire if I shed sparks of genius.”
― Scott Lynch, The Republic of Thieves

“Had not enough gone wrong?”
― Brom, The Child Thief

“I'd rather die on an adventure than live standing still.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“I apologize for anything I might have done. I was not myself.”
“I apologize for shooting you in the leg.” said Lila. “I was myself entirely.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“But the thing about people, Kell had discovered, is that they didn't really want to know. They thought they did, but knowing only made them miserable.”
― Victoria Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“The moments that define lives aren't always obvious. They don't scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there's no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. They aren't always protracted, heavy with meaning. Between one sip and the next, Victor made the biggest mistake of his life, and it was made of nothing more than one line. Three small words.

"I'll go first.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“Victor was naturally quiet, but even more so under pressure, which gave his peers the distinct impression he knew what he was doing, even when he didn't.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“Whenever there's something I don't like about a stranger, I try to imagine that someone out there loves them, and it puts them in a different light.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Perfect Ruin

“I have seen my father concede to utter defeat in the hospital room. I've heard him choke on sobs and whisper angry things to the god of the sky when he thought I was asleep at Lex's bedside. I know that those uniforms are worn by men - only men.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Perfect Ruin

“In the name of all that is holy, tell me why God felt the need to make a hell. It seems so redundant.”
― Rick Yancey, The Curse of the Wendigo

“It's not just like that. I can't just swim away."

"Why not?"

"I'm afraid I'll drown." He looks up and gives the world's smallest smile. He takes a deep breath with those lungs. "I'm afraid I'll drown.”
― Hannah Moskowitz, Teeth

“I wish we could get away from our fish.”
― Hannah Moskowitz, Teeth

“I wish we would all just fall apart so I wouldn't have to listen to the downfall happen, so slowly, so painfully.”
― Hannah Moskowitz, Teeth

“The dream state just before wakening when it seems perfectly logical for the goldfish not to like peeling its own potatoes on the bus.”
― Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels

“So...I suggest you try and get control over your more unusual nature, see if you can't coax those claws away, and I'll try very, very hard not to throw up over what's left of your shoes. How does that sound?”
― Kate Griffin, A Madness of Angels

“On the long drive home, Laurence tuned out his parents explaining to him that life isn’t an adventure, for chrissake, life is a long slog and a series of responsibilities and demands. When Laurence was old enough to do what he liked, he would be old enough to understand he couldn’t do what he liked.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“I am unflappable,” Laurence told the bus driver. Who shrugged, as if he’d thought so too, once upon a time, until someone had flapped him.”
― Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky

“It is a very thin line between us and the abyss, Will Henry,' he said. 'For most it is like that line out there, where the sea meets the sky. They see it. They cannot deny the evidence of their eyes, but they never cross it. They cannot cross it; though they chase it for a thousand years, it will forever stay where it is. Do you realize it took our species more than ten millennia to realize that simple fact? That the line is unreachable, that we live on a ball and not on a plate? Most of us do, anyway. Men like Jacob Torrance and John Kearns ... Those kinds of men still live on a plate. Do you understand what I mean?'

I nodded. I thought I did.”
― Rick Yancey, The Isle of Blood

“It will be a seminal moment in the history of science, Will Henry, the finding of the magnificum, and not without some ancillary benefit to me personally. If I succeed, it will bring nothing short of immortality-- well, the only concept of immortality that I'm prepared to accept. But if I do succeed, the space between us and the ineffable will shrink a little more. It is what we strive for as scientists, and what we dread as human beings. There is something in us that longs for the indescribable, the unattainable, the thing that cannot be seen.”
― Rick Yancey, The Isle of Blood

“In every heart, there lives a Jack Kearns.”
― Rick Yancey, The Isle of Blood

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower