Ryan > Ryan's Quotes

“I've made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“If you're going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov

“Part of being healthy is being able to hold and remember who people actually are instead of who we wish they were. It's a daily struggle against a brain that tends to want to cling to fairy-tale hope, but it's also the only way to guarantee a life surrounded by those who build rather than destroy. In the end, the loss is about letting go of what I never had in the first place.”
― Kerry Kletter, The First Time She Drowned

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“People ask me, 'Who is your hero?'
My answer, my true answer, is that I am my hero, the me I aspire to be, the very best at everything I put my hand to, treating people with dignity and respect because it's the right thing to do, surmounting obstacles with justice and empathy and compassion. I don't need anyone else to live my life for me, to mold me, to tell me what is or isn't possible. I don't need a path to follow.
I create my own path. I live up to my own dreams. I demand greatness of mind, body, and spirit, not someone else's, but my own.
I am my own hero. Are you yours?”
― Chris Kluwe, Beautifully Unique Sparkleponies: On Myths, Morons, Free Speech, Football, and Assorted Absurdities

“As a librarian for 18 years at the Merck branch of the Trenton Public Library, I was sorely tested by the slow-witted and obtuse among the citizenry”
― joyce carol oates

“To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.”
― Madonna

“A pretty sight, a lady with a book.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Everyone probably thinks that I'm a raving nymphomaniac, that I have an insatiable sexual appetite, when the truth is I'd rather read a book.”
― Madonna

“Power is being told you're not loved and not being destroyed by it.”
― Madonna

“His name is Robert Paulson.”
― Victor LaValle, The Devil in Silver

“History is hereditary only in this way: we, all of us, inherit everything, and then we choose what to cherish, what to disavow, and what do do next, which is why it's worth trying to know where things come from.”
― Jill Lepore

“The library is inhabited by spirits that come out of the pages at night.”
― Isabel Allende

“For to know a man's library is, in some measure, to know his mind.”
― Geraldine Brooks, March

“I know death well enough to hear it gather its breath.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“Every moment wasted looking back, keeps us from moving forward.”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton

“Too many women
in too many countries
speak the same language,
of silence...”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History

“If your joy is derived from what society thinks of you, you're always going to be disappointed.”
― Madonna

“Nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“I wonder if this is what other people seem to have that I do not—this courage to fall because they have the memory of standing.”
― Kerry Kletter

“We are all part of the same story, each of us different chapters. We may not have the power to choose setting or plot, but we can choose what kind of character we want to be.”
― David Arnold, Kids of Appetite

“Every great character, Iz, be it on page or screen, is multidimensional. The good guys aren't all good, the bad guys aren't all bad, and any character wholly one or the other shouldn't exist at all. Remember this when I describe the antics that follow, for though I am not a villain, I am not immune to villainy.”
― David Arnold, Mosquitoland

“When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.”
― Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time

“For the most part, you don't hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.”
― Jeff Zentner, Goodbye Days

“Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what'd happen if all those people put their puzzle pieces together.”
― Jeff Zentner, Goodbye Days

“I wish there was some way I could control the variables, but if the time in the darkness taught me anything, it's that the world is larger than my grasp.”
― Pierce Brown, Morning Star

“Funny how a single word can change everything in your life."
"It is not funny at all. Steel is power. Money is power. But of all the things in all the worlds, words are power.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“I used to imagine Better was a place you could get to. A moment when I would look around and see that Everything Was Fine. But that’s not how this works. Being better isn’t a battle you fight and win. Feeling okay is a war, one that lasts your whole life, and the only way to win is to keep on fighting.”
― Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving

“I sometimes look at my bookshelf now and think about how someday I'm going to die without ever reading a lot of the books there. And one might be life-changingly good and I'll never know.”
― Jeff Zentner, Goodbye Days