Allison Ball > Allison's Quotes

“We are the books we read and the things we love.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“But I love you, and before you say it words do matter. They're not pointless. If they were pointless then they couldn't start revolutions and they wouldn't change history and they wouldn't be the things that you think about every night before you go to sleep. If they were just words we wouldn't listen to songs, we wouldn't beg to be read to when we're kids. If they were just words, then they'd have no meaning and stories wouldn't have been around since before humans could write. We wouldn't have learned to write. If they were just words then people wouldn't fall in love because of them, feel bad because of them, ache because of them, stop aching because of them, have sex, quite a lot of the time, because of them.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“It’s like he’s picking up parts of the world and showing them to me, saying, See? It’s beautiful.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“Shitness, my sister says, has a momentum that good luck just doesn't have.”
― Cath Crowley, Words in Deep Blue

“You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“Things'll get worse before they get better.”
― Karen M. McManus, One of Us Is Lying

“I don't know why it's so hard for people to admit that sometimes they're just assholes who screw up because they don't expect to get caught.”
― Karen M. McManus, One of Us Is Lying

“If I'm not thinking about one shit storm, I have to think about another.”
― Karen M. McManus, One of Us Is Lying

“You're not going to wither up and die from this, Addy," Ashton lectures me as she shoves me toward the shower. "He doesn't get to erase you from the world.”
― Karen M. McManus, One of Us Is Lying

“Honestly, I don’t care what we do. I just want to stay wrapped around him for as long as possible, fighting sleep and forgetting about the rest of the world.”
― Karen M. McManus, One of Us Is Lying

“There's a space between forgetting and moving on, and it's not easy to find.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, Windfall

“It's not easy, you know? To get the thing you want most in the world in the worst way possible.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, Windfall

“How many times can a life be split into a before and an after?”
― Jennifer E. Smith, Windfall

“You're both the fire and the water that extinguishes it. You're the narrator, the protagonist, and the sidekick. You're the storyteller and the story told. You are somebody's something, but you are also your you.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tightening, infinitely.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Spirals grow infinitely small the farther you follow them inward, but they also grow infinitely large the farther you follow them out.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Everyone wanted me to feed them that story—darkness to light, weakness to strength, broken to whole. I wanted it, too.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“Most adults are just hollowed out. You watch them try to fill themselves up with booze or money or God or fame or whatever they worship, and it all rots them from the inside until nothing is left but the money or the booze or God they though would save them. Adults think they are wielding power, but really power is wielding them.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“We always say we are beneath the stars. We aren't, of course—there is no up or down, and anyway the stars surround us. But we say we are beneath them, which is nice. So often English glorifies the human—we are whos, other animals are that—but English puts us beneath the stars, at least.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“In the best conversations, you don't even remember what you talked about, only how it felt. It felt like we were in some place your body can't visit, some place with no ceiling and no walls and no floor and no instruments”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“It's turtles all the way fucking down, Holmesy. You're trying to find the turtle at the bottom of the pile, but that's not how it works.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“I thought, lying there, that I might love him for the rest of my life. We did love each other—maybe we never said it, and maybe love was never something we were in, but it was something I felt. I loved him, and I thought, maybe I will never see him again, and I'll be stuck missing him, and isn't that so terrible.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“It’s so weird, to know you’re crazy and not be able to do anything about it, you know? It’s not like you believe yourself to be normal. You know there is a problem. But you can’t figure a way through to fixing it. Because you can’t be sure, you know?”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it’s about the courage to show up when you can’t predict or control the outcome.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“People are opting out of vital conversations about diversity and inclusivity because they fear looking wrong, saying something wrong, or being wrong. Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and it corrodes trust and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“If we want people to fully show up, to bring their whole selves including their unarmored, whole hearts—so that we can innovate, solve problems, and serve people—we have to be vigilant about creating a culture in which people feel safe, seen, heard, and respected.”
― Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.

“Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you've been in before - you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I gave up practically the whole world for you,” I tell him, walking through the front door of my own love story. “The sun, stars, ocean, trees, everything, I gave it all up for you.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun