Allison > Allison's Quotes

“At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“He had carefully avoided her out of the natural cowardice that characterizes the stronger sex.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Of all the icy blasts that blow on love, a request for money is the most chilling.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“After the pain of this disappointment her heart once more stood empty, and the succession of identical days began again.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought him.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Indeed, for the last three years, he had carefully avoided her, as a result of the natural cowardice so characteristic of the stronger sex...”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the opportunity, the courage.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“… Her heart remained empty once more, and the procession of days all alike began again. So they were going to follow one another, like this, in line, always identical, innumerable, bringing nothing!”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“But what was making her unhappy? Where was the extraordinary catastrophe that had wrecked her life?She raised her head and looked around, as though trying to find the cause of her suffering.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“But breathing doesn’t always mean living, and maybe… maybe genocide doesn’t always leave bodies.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“To those who’ve survived: Breathe. That’s it. Once more. Good. You’re good. Even if you’re not, you’re alive. That is a victory.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky

“And I kept thinking about how sky is a singular noun, as if it's one thing. But the sky isn't one thing. The sky is everything. And last night, it was enough.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“We never really talked much or even looked at each other, but it didn't matter because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe even more intimate than eye contact anyway. I mean, anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person and why.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn't.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“It’s a weird phrase in English, in love, like it’s a sea you drown in or a town you live in. You don’t get to be in anything else—in friendship or in anger or in hope. All you can be in is love.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“In the best conversations, you don't even remember what you talked about, only how it felt. It felt like we were in some place your body can't visit, some place with no ceiling and no walls and no floor and no instruments”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Nobody gets anybody else, not really. We're all stuck inside ourselves.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Worrying is the correct worldview. Life is worrisome.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“She noted, more than once, that the meteor shower was happening, beyond the overcast sky, even if we could not see it. Who cares if she can kiss? She can see through the clouds.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“I'm in love with you," he said quietly.

"Augustus," I said.

"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars