Tally > Tally's Quotes

“What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand.

I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…" he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word.
"What a stupid lamb," I sighed.
"What a sick, masochistic lion.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

“How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” he answered promptly.
“And how long have you been seventeen?”
His lips twitched as he stared at the road. “A while,” he admitted at last.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

“People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman

“I tensed, waiting for the fury - both his and mine - but it was only quiet and calm in the darkness of his room. I could almost taste the sweetness of reunion in the air, a separate fragrance from the perfume of his breath; the emptiness when we were apart left its own bitter aftertaste, something I didn't consciously notice until it was removed.

There was no friction in the space between us. The stillness was peaceful - not like the calm before the tempest, but like a clear night untouched by even the dream of a storm.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse

“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

“The wheel of fortune [...] tells us that we all only want victory. We all want to triumph. But we all have to learn to endure what comes. We have to learn to treat misfortune and great fortune with indifference. That is wisdom.”
― Philippa Gregory, The Lady of the Rivers

“I'd been writing for as long as I could remember, but once I read Otherworld, I'd stopped writing original stories to focus on fan fiction. It was such a rich, exciting world that I couldn't think of writing anything else.”
― Allison van Diepen, The Vampire Stalker

“There are two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.”
― Neal Shusterman, Unwind

“Did life really matter? Could hopes and dreams and plans and life end so quickly, so terribly? She looked at the sky. Was anything there besides stars? What did it all mean? What was God? Who was God?”
― Yvonne Lehman, Hearts That Survive: A Novel of the Titanic

“The world will always choose convenience over reality. It's easier to hate, blame, and fear than it is to understand. No one wants the truth; they want entertainment.”
― Chris Colfer, The Wishing Spell

“I don’t have many friends, not the living, breathing sort at any rate. And I don’t mean that in a sad and lonely way; I’m just not the type of person who accumulates friends or enjoys crowds. I’m good with words, but not spoken kind; I’ve often thought what a marvelous thing it would be if I could only conduct relationships on paper. And I suppose, in a sense, that’s what I do, for I’ve hundreds of the other sort, the friends contained within bindings, pages after glorious pages of ink, stories that unfold the same way every time but never lose their joy, that take me by the hand and lead me through doorways into worlds of great terror and rapturous delight. Exciting, worthy, reliable companions - full of wise counsel, some of them - but sadly ill-equipped to offer the use of a spare bedroom for a month or two.”
― Kate Morton, The Distant Hours

“This country would get along much better if people learned how to suffer in silence.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I like the idea of something greater than us. We destroy things with our curiosity. We shatter with our best intentions. We are no closer to perfection than we were one hundred years ago, or five hundred.”
― Lauren DeStefano, Sever

“No wonder Wonderland isn't funny to read anymore: We live there full time. We need a break from it.”
― Gregory Maguire, Lost

“Some people are finicky about going to the theater alone, but I’m not. Because when the lights go down, the only relationship left in the room is the one between the movie and me.”
― Stephanie Perkins, Anna and the French Kiss

“I loved the stage not because it provided an escape from myself or my humdrum life but because when the curtain went up I could be whoever I wanted to be, and that was true freedom - to be myself.”
― Suzanne Farrell, Holding On to the Air

“I just can’t believe that life would give us to each other,’ he said, ‘and then take it back.’

‘I can,’ she said. ‘Life’s a bastard.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“I was born in February, but I come alive in October.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Attachments

“Just back from canal ride on bike. Went really well until someone threw an egg at me from a bridge. Or maybe it was a bird which went into sudden labour. Will clean off egg, not do Boris Bikes any more and go to Obesity Clinic on bus. At least will be alive and clean when sitting on arse instead of dead and covered in egg.”
― Helen Fielding, Mad About the Boy

“Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“The more stupid one is, the more he thinks he thinks he knows.”
― Eric Shanower, Oz: Road to Oz

“It felt good to be writing in her own room, in her own bed. To get lost in the World of Mages and stay lost. To not hear any voices in her head but Simon's and Baz's. Not even her own. This was why Cath wrote fic. For these hours when their world supplanted the real world. When she could just ride their feelings for each other like a wave, like something falling downhill.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,” Wren said. “It’s the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“Sometimes we win; sometimes we lose. The main thing is that we always, we always go on.”
― Philippa Gregory, The White Princess

“No one controls your destiny. Even at the very worst - there is always choice.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Things happen and once they start happening you pretty much just have to hold on for dear life and see where they drop you when they stop.”
― Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now