Liani Lye > Liani's Quotes

“Randy needed (and failed) to *soar* in order to be able to make a successful life for himself. Chad just had to not fuck up.”
― Trae Crowder, Corey Ryan Forrester, Drew Morgan

“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.”
― Lillian Hellman

“Well, if you are to help me with my work, you had better get used to stories without endings. True stories seldom have endings.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly by Night

“The white American is not innately racist. I sense innate docility. He will follow the law if the leadership tells him to do that. He would not rebel if he thought he'd be punished. But if the laws are flouted and winked at, he'll wink, too.' - interview with Leona Brady”
― Studs Terkel, Race: How Blacks And Whites Think And Feel About The American Obsession

“The twin grapes looked into the smoked glass and saw a mind full of nothing they could understand.”
― Frances Hardinge

“It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell upon them. —playwright Lillian Hellman”
― Carol Tavris, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

“I generally find,' Clent murmured after a pause, 'that it is best to treat borrowed time the same way as borrowed money. Spend it with panache, and try to be somewhere else when it runs out.'

'And when we get found, Mr. Clent, when the creditors and bailiffs come after us and it's payment time...'

'...then we borrow more, madam, at a higher interest. We embark on a wilder gamble, make a bigger promise, tell a braver story, devise a more intricate lie, sell the hides of imaginary dragons to desperate men, climb to even higher and more precarious ground...and later, of course, our fall and catastrophe will be all the worse, but later will be our watchword, Mosca. We have nothing else - but we can at least make later later.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly Trap

“Push something in someone’s face, and they will shove it away reflexively. Threaten to snatch it away from them, and sometimes they become convinced that it is what they want.”
― Frances Hardinge, Fly Trap

“If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

“Weird doors open. People fall into things.”
― David Sedaris

“Zouelle had forgotten how tiring it was listening to a Neverfell at full pace, like being bludgeoned with exclamation marks.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Yes, I know,’ she said in answer to the unasked, for there was no time for explanations. ‘Yes. My face is spoilt.’

Grandible’s jowl wobbled and creased. Then, for the first time that Neverfell could remember, he changed to a Face she had never seen before, a frown more ferocious and alarming than either of the others.

‘Who the shambles told you that?’ he barked. ‘Spoilt? I’ll spoil them.’ He took hold of her chin and examined her. ‘A bit sadder, maybe. A bit wiser. But nothing rotten. You’re just growing yourself a rind at last. Still a good cheese.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Do you know why a vandal is worse than a thief?" asked the man on the right, in a soft growl. "A thief steals a treasure from its owner. A vandal steals it from the world.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Change is necessary and, deny it as we may, in the end change is always inevitable.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“I swam across the torrent of my madness, and pulled myself upon the shore of a new and better sanity.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“She’s got us, she’s got us all. Caverna. She doesn’t want to let us go. Do you know what she’s like? A huge trap-lantern with us inside her, digesting us really, really slowly, and not wanting to let any of us go. Maybe that’s the worst kind of prison – not knowing you’re in a prison. Because then you don’t fight to get out.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Wishes are thorns, he told himself sharply. They do us no good, just stick into our skin and hurt us.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“Neverfell shepherded her herd of frightened, woolly suspicions.”
― Frances Hardinge, A Face Like Glass

“The cost of living the dream, I was taught, is the responsibility to expand it for others. It’s a more than fair price.”
― David Litt, Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years

“This kind of patriotism had been co-opted... when we were told that the only way to love your country was to support invading another one.”
― David Litt, Thanks, Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years

“We are what we do, and what we allow to be done.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“What aspects of yourself would you fight to protect, as if you were fighting for your life?”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“Maybe you couldn’t ever owe somebody your life, not really. You couldn’t let anyone else decide what you did with it. You had to live it yourself, as truly as you could.”
― Frances Hardinge, Deeplight

“I can hardly speak Korean, but in H Mart it feels like I’m fluent.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart