Jonah > Jonah's Quotes

“I don't believe in love."

"It's not a religion," he says. "It exists whether you believe in it or not.”
― Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star

“When people kill themselves, they think they're ending the pain, but all they're doing is passing it on to those they leave behind.”
― Jeannette Walls

“Here’s the truth about healing. It’s a fucking myth—an idea they try to sell you on to keep you from killing yourself. You love someone and they leave, but they never entirely go away. You feel them there, acutely, like an amputated limb.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“I know how you love endings, so I will write one for you.”
― Michelle Hodkin, The Becoming of Noah Shaw

“It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
― Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

“I didn't know you this morning, and now I don't remember not knowing you.”
― Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star

“Remember then: there is only one time that is important-- Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!”
― Leo Tolstoy, What Men Live by and Other Tales

“Remember that there is only one important time and it is Now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person with whom you are, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making that person, the one standing at your side, happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.”
― Leo Tolstoy, The Emperor's Three Questions

“Bill was — there was no other word for it — cool. He was tall, with long hair that he had tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing an earring with what looked like a fang dangling from it. Bill’s clothes would not have looked out of place at a rock concert, except that Harry recognized his boots to be made, not of leather, but of dragon hide.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“I write only because
There is a voice within me
That will not be still”
― Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

“Only the fearless made proceed.
Brave ones, foolish ones.
Both walk not the middle road.”
― Toby Fox

“Despite everything, it's still you.”
― Toby Fox

“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.”
― Kait Rokowski

“Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don’t want to die.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.”
― Ptolemy

“Sometimes you read a book so special that you want to carry it around with you for months after you've finished just to stay near it.”
― Markus Zusak

“shrestha (SHRES·thuh) noun When a dream comes true—but not for the dreamer. Archaic;”
― Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer

“Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily return. ”
― Charlotte Brontë

“Strange: how when a light is extinguished, it's immediately as if it has never been. Darkness fills in again, complete.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“P.J. said, "That's true about any statement we make, isn't it? We never tell as much as we know."
"Right! So We're lying. So almost every statement is a lie, we can't help it."
"Yeah. But some statements are more lies than others.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, We Were the Mulvaneys

“someone will remember us
I say
even in another time”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“We are asleep until we fall in Love!”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Pylades: I’ll take care of you.
Orestes: It’s rotten work.
Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.”
― Anne Carson, Euripides

“You see, it is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.”
― Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Keep your nose in a book – and keep other people's noses out of which books you choose to stick your nose into!”
― Art Spiegelman

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.”
― Allen Ginsberg, Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems