Sian > Sian's Quotes

“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and... cancel her.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“She had a sadness that was so deep, but it still could turn to light in a second, and when I saw her smile I wondered what it would be like to make her smile. I thought... I thought it would be like the discovery of smiling.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“I can't trust the people I care about not to hurt me. And I'm not sure I can trust myself not to hurt them, either.”
― Holly Black, White Cat

“You might get only one shot. So shoot. You know who said that?"
The rifle clatters to the bloody floor.
"Hanna FUCKING Donnelly. That's who.”
― Jay Kristoff, Gemina

“Because before you acquired language, you didn't exist.”
― Marcel Theroux, Strange Bodies

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“The manager
thunks down a couple of steps, glares at her, glares at her for rather a long
time. The manager, clearly, is tempted. That momentary glimpse of flesh has
been ricocheting around in his brain for half an hour. He is wracking his mind
with vast cosmological dilemmas. Y.T., hopes that he does not try anything,
because the dentata's effects can be unpredictable.
"Make up your fucking mind," she says.
It works. This fresh burst of culture shock rattles the jeek out of his ethical
conundrum. He gives Y.T. a disapproving glower -- she, after all, forced him to
be attracted to her, forced him to get horny, made his head swim -- she didn't
have to get arrested, did she? -- and so on top of everything else he's angry
with her. As if he has a right to be.
This is the gender that invented the polio vaccine?”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

“Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay. I tilted my head back. The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“You'll still make a great king."

"Of course I will," he scoffed. "I'm melancholy, not daft.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“That's not very Team Reality of you."
His smile matched mine. "Screw Team Reality - I'm leaving to join Team Sanity.”
― Alexandra Bracken, In the Afterlight

“I don't mean to be such a burden," I whispered. All I ever wanted to do was protect you.
"It's not a burden if people are willing to carry it," she pointed out.”
― Alexandra Bracken, In the Afterlight

“Are you sure this isn't a nightmare? And that we won't just wake up?
Yes.
Because dreamers always wake up and leave their monsters behind.”
― Alexandra Bracken, In the Afterlight

“there's nothing quite the same as sitting with a real book in your hands”
― Jay Kristoff, LIFEL1K3

“You know, democracy sounds like a great idea until you spend three minutes with the average voter.”
― Jay Kristoff, LIFEL1K3

“There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are, for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Of course I loved books more than people.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“There are too many books in the world to read in a single lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“What better place to kill time than a library?”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books? ”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“Tremble and fear, all enemies!” he shouted. “For we shall shake the air with thunder and blood! Your doom is imminent!”
― Brandon Sanderson, Skyward

“So . . . ," I said. "You're saying that by the end of our training, you expect us to be able to use grappling hooks made of energy to smash our enemies with flaming chunks of space debris?"
"Yes."
"That . . . ," I whispered, "that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Skyward