Noora > Noora's Quotes

“Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is.”
― Maxim Gorky, The Lower Depths and Other Plays

“Our existence has always and everywhere been tragic, but man has converted these numberless tragedies into works of art. I know of nothing more astonishing or more wonderful than this transformation.”
― Maxim Gorky

“I wept because i had no shoes,
until i met a man who had no feet.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Per aspera ad astra, Papa,' I whispered. Through hardship to the stars.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Guilt is a hunter.
Fate is a hunter.
Shame is a hunter.
Fear is a hunter.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Yet amidst all that, life has spit in the eye of death.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“The old man spoke of nothing but shoes. He spoke of them with such love and emotion that a woman in our group had crowned him “the shoe poet.” The woman disappeared a day later but the nickname survived. “The shoes always tell the story,” said the shoe poet. “Not always,” I countered. “Yes, always. Your boots, they are expensive, well made. That tells me that you come from a wealthy family. But the style is one made for an older woman. That tells me they probably belonged to your mother. A mother sacrificed her boots for her daughter. That tells me you are loved, my dear. And your mother is not here, so that tells me that you are sad, my dear. The shoes tell the story.” I paused in the center of the frozen road and watched the stubby old cobbler shuffle ahead of me. The shoe poet was right. Mother had sacrificed for me.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“What determines how we remember history and which elements are preserved and penetrate the collective consciousness? If historical novels stir your interest, pursue the facts, history, memories, and personal testimonies available. These are the shoulders that historical fiction sits upon. When the survivors are gone we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“Brave doesn't mean you're not scared. It means you go on even though you're scared.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“That's the problem. We let people say stuff, and they say it so much that it becomes okay to them and normal for us. What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“You can destroy wood and brick, but you can't destroy a movement.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“Pac said Thug Life stood for 'The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody'.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“People like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice. I think we all wait for that one time though, that one time when it ends right.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“Once you've seen how broken someone is it's like seeing them naked—you can't look at them the same anymore.”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“You still got that old laptop? The one you had before we bought you that expensive-ass fruit one?"
I laugh. "It's an Apple MacBook, Daddy."
"It damn sure wasn't the price of an apple. Anyway, you got the old one?”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Insulted and Humiliated

“For, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights and Other Stories

“Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real.”
― Nora Ephron

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.”
― Victor Hugo

“I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one question to yourself: why in fact should one tell the truth? What obliges us to do it? And why do we consider telling the truth a virtue? Imagine that you meet a madman, who claims that he is a fish and that we are all fish. Are you going to argue with him? Are you going to undress in front of him and show him that you don't have fins? Are you going to say to his face what you think? Well, tell me!'

His brother was silent and Edward went on: 'If you told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth, only what you really thought, you would enter into a serious conversation with a madman and you yourself would become mad. And it is the same way with the world that surrounds us. If I obstinately told a man the truth to his face, it would mean I was taking him seriously. And to take something so unimportant seriously means to become less than serious oneself. I, you see, must lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and become one of them myself.”
― Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet