mari > mari's Quotes

“The first of many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man's hands after hours spent in a wood shop.”
― Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

“It was the song of the birds in spring and the call of the wind through bare branches on a cold winter afternoon. Fate. Both my anguish and my solace. My escort and my cage.”
― Leslye Walton, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

“Then I heard a noise I’d never heard in real life before. The kind of noise you hear in movies when horse’s hooves are beating on cobblestones or the members of Monty Python were cracking together coconuts.”
― Kristen Ashley, Fantastical

“Halt you villains! Unhand that science!”
― N.D. Stevenson

“You can't just go round murdering people. There are rules, Nimona.”
― N.D. Stevenson, Nimona

“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
― William Goldman, Four Screenplays with Essays: Marathon Man - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - The Princess Bride - Misery

“Life isn't fair, it's just fairer than death, that's all.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

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

“People have a habit of inventing fictions they will believe wholeheartedly in order to ignore the truth they cannot accept.”
― Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

“I should never be left alone with my mind for too long.”
― Libba Bray

“In every end, there is also a beginning.”
― Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty

“There is nothing more terrifying than the absoluteness of one who believes he's right.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all?”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“There is no greater power on this earth than story.” Will paced the length of the room. “People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense—words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions—words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.” Will grabbed the sheaf of newspaper clippings he kept in a stack on his desk. “This, and these”—he gestured to the library’s teeming shelves—“they’re a testament to the country’s rich supernatural history.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“I don't think you should die until you're ready. Until you've wrung out every last bit of living you can.”
― Libba Bray, Going Bovine

“People will believe anything if it means they can go on with their lives and not have to think too hard about it.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“Any librarian or scholar will tell you: Close is not the same as accurate.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“If you don't want a man dead, don't bludgeon him over the head repeatedly.”
― Naomi Novik, Uprooted

“We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“You’re nobody’s doorway but your own, and the only one who gets to tell you how your story ends is you.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“She was a story, not an epilogue.”
― Seanan McGuire, Every Heart a Doorway

“Witch. The word drifted across his mind. We call such women so, because we have no other name.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“Every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen. Decide as seems best, one course or the other; each way will have its bitter with its sweet.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“I believe in memory. I believe in remembering someone you love so well that it becomes kind of like a ghost. You remember someone so hard that it feels like they're in the next room, just around the corner, that they could walk in any minute.”
― Katherine Arden, Dead Voices

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

“You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.”
― 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 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

“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