Meghan Powers > Meghan's Quotes

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“It is possible to be in love with you just because of who you are.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

“In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them.
Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness.
Her raven boys.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“...she made her home in between the pages of books.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Linger

“While I'm gone," Gansey said, pausing, "dream me the world. Something new for every night.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves

“There are moments that you'll remember for the rest of your life and there are moments that you think you'll remember for the rest of your life, and it's not often they turn out to be the same moment.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races

“I am so, so alive.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races

“I didn't know," I start truthfully, "that it was the hard way when I started on it.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Scorpio Races

“What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“I want to weep, she thought. I want to be comforted. I’m so tired of being strong. I want to be foolish and frightened for once. Just for a small while, that’s all …a day … an hour ...
...One day, she promised herself as she lay abed, one day she would allow herself to be less than strong.
But not today. It could not be today.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“A woman's life is nine parts mess to one part magic, you'll learn that soon enough...and the parts that look like magic turn out to be the messiest of all.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“When you're at sea," Gwen would probably reply, "it's not food. It's fuel, for further exploits."
"So the exploit fuels the next exploit, and the next the next, and so on? Is there nothing more, nothing else?"
"Is there ever?”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“I guess it's funny how life turns out?" she tried. "Not last I checked," Errol said with a snort.”
― Daniel Handler, We Are Pirates

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play. Later I would see this: how impersonal and grasping our love was, pinging around the universe, hoping for a host to give form to our wishes.”
― Emma Cline, The Girls

“Poor girls. The world fattens them on the promise of love. How badly they need it, and how little most of them will ever get.”
― Emma Cline, The Girls

“You wanted things and you couldn't help it, because there was only your life, only yourself to wake up with, and how could you ever tell yourself what you wanted was wrong?”
― Emma Cline, The Girls

“The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“If Socrates leaves his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.’ Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law. But always meeting ourselves.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses