Ida Ottesen > Ida's Quotes

“Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“It’s so strange how someone can be one person one day, then be transformed over the course of a few months, then come back to their previous life with completely different insides but all anyone still sees are the same old outsides.”
― Amy Reed, The Nowhere Girls

“Cora, you cannot always keep yourself away from things that hurt you. We all wish we could, but we cannot: to live at all is to be bruised.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“William Ransome and Cora Seaborne, stripped of code and convention, even of speech, stood with her strong hand in his: children of the earth lost in wonder.”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“We both speak of illuminating the world, but we have different sources of light,”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“in the end it was purpose I wanted, not achievement — you see the difference?”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“Male pride, she thinks: the most tender, contemptible thing!”
― Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent

“I don’t hold a grudge. I cradle it. I coddle it. I feed it fine cuts of meat and send it to the best schools. I nurture my grudges, Rollins.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“Stay,” she panted. Tears leaked from her eyes. “Stay till the end.”
“And after,” he said. “And always.”
“I want to feel safe again. I want to go home to Ravka.”
“Then I’ll take you there. We’ll set fire to raisins or whatever you heathens do for fun.”
“Zealot,” she said weakly.
“Witch.”
“Barbarian.”
“Nina,” he whispered, “little red bird. Don’t go.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“If we were different people in different circumstances, I would get down on my knees and beg you to stay at the end of the winter. I would move heaven and earth and the Underworld itself to keep you with me.”
― Katee Robert, Neon Gods

“How lonely it will be here, when it's just us.”
― Charlotte McConaghy , Migrations

“The first time I heard the bard reach this part of the story I thought he would sing that you built a new ship and began to sail home. This should be where the story ends, shouldn’t it? But that is not what he sang next. I demanded to know why. Do you not know where Ogygia is, he asked, his blind eyes moistening. I did not know. Why would any Ithacan have heard of such a place? It took you nine days to drift there, if the poet tells it rightly. So after all the danger you endured, after all the risks you took, I have it on good authority from the poet that you have never been further away from me than you are at this moment.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“It does hurt, I whispered. It should hurt. She isn't a footnote, she's a person. And she - all the Trojan women - should be memorialised as much as any other person.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“He loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans and slaves. Oenone loses her husband and she raises their son. Which of those is the more heroic act?”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Who could love a coward?' She had once heard a woman say. Laodamia knew the answer. Someone for whom the alternative is loving a corpse.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Waiting is the cruellest thing I have ever endured. Like bereavement, but with no certainty.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Because really, how many cannibalistic giants can one Greek plausibly meet as he sails the open seas?”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Why should the past be any guarantee of the future?”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“That is what mortals do: first they ask, then they beg, finally they bargain.”
― Natalie Haynes, A Thousand Ships

“Our hopes rest with you, Mister Brekker. If you fail, all the world will suffer for it."
"Oh, it's worse than that, Van Eck. If I fail, I don't get paid.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“But if you have to go, then go. Go if it hurts. Go if it's time. Just go knowing you were loved, that I will never forget you, that you will live in everything Connor and I do. Go knowing I love you purely, Harry, that you were an amazing father. Go knowing I told you all my secrets. Because you were my best friend.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“He used to say his daddy was the sun after the sun had gone to bed, and all these years later, I still think that's the best description I've heard.”
― Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters

“Loneliness hardened in Arthur's stomach....
Frequently he could feel his loneliness: he could locate it with his fingers and if pushed too hard, it hurt. If he ate quickly, it hurt. He drank a lot of water, to flush it out, but it never came. He kept expecting to see it after he'd visited the lavatory. Small and blue. Afraid. He did not know what he would do with it. He did not know what he would do without it.”
― Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters

“You might say the problem is with me and your readers will, I’m sure. There’s nothing so hateful as a woman who gets involved with another woman’s husband. Never mind the husband’s part: he was tricked or seduced, most likely, and it’s funny how men insist on power in all aspects of their lives except when it does not suit them, and then they’re content to be feeble and let the women take responsibility”
― Emma Stonex, The Lamplighters