Brittany Alyse > Brittany's Quotes

“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Anaïs Nin

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”
― Anaïs Nin

“I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can't believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant.
But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK!”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“FLY THE PLANE, MADDIE.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“We are a sensational team”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Remember this when you are queen,” he whispered hoarsely. “I moved the earth and the water for you.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Lebedeva’s eyes shone. “Masha, listen to me. Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy, and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“But if you must be clever, then be clever. Be brave. Sleep with fists closed and shoot straight.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“She is so stubborn, her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“This is what it means to be a woman in this world. Every step is a bargain with pain. Make your black deals in the black wood and decide what you’ll trade for power. For the opposite of weakness, which is not strength but hardness. I am a trap, but so is everything. Pick your price. I am a huckster with a hand in your pocket. I am freedom and I will eat your heart.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“I thought: this is how you make a human being. A human being is beautiful and sick. A human being glitters and starves.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“What happens to the West happens to Snow White, which is to say they both turn into jokes.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Six-Gun Snow White

“Koschei, Koschei,” she whispered. “What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“How long your hair has grown. You could strangle a man in it.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“There are no safe choices. Only other choices.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Shall I tell you a story? A new and terrible one? A ghost story? Are you ready? Shall I begin? Once upon a time there were four girls. One was pretty. One was clever. One charming, and one...one was mysterious. But they were all damaged, you see. Something not right about the lot of them. Bad blood. Big dreams. Oh, I left that part out. Sorry, that should have come before. They were all dreamers, these girls. One by one, night after night, the girls came together. And they sinned. Do you know what that sin was? No one? Pippa? Ann? Their sin was that they believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change what they were--damaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed. Necessary. But it wasn't true. This is a ghost story remember? A tragedy. They were misled. Betrayed by their own stupid hopes. Things couldn't be different for them, because they weren't special after all. So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. With what can't be. There, now. Isn't that the scariest story you've ever heard?”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty