Maddiy > Maddiy's Quotes

“That most people don’t do what we tell them to. They do what we let them get away with.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don't turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“If an atrocity isn't written about, it stops existing when the last witnesses die. That's what I can't stand. If a mass shooting, a bomb, a whatever, is written about, then at least it's made a tiny dent in the world's memory. Someone, somewhere, some time, has a chance of learning what happened. And, just maybe, acting on it. Or not. But at least it's there.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Bury the hatchet. Hatchets don't work on ghosts. They cannot hear you. You only end up hatcheting yourself.”
― David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks

“And you know what? You don’t get to say it’s not a big thing. This is a big fucking thing, okay? This was supposed to be—this is mine. I’m supposed to decide when and where and who knows and how I want to say it.”
― Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

“It isn't enough to be beautiful, James thought he heard her say, though with the ringing in his ears he couldn't know for sure. Beautiful is for other people. You have to be something for you.”
― Molly Prentiss, Tuesday Nights in 1980

“If curiosity would kill him, he would take it.”
― Molly Prentiss, Tuesday Nights in 1980

“Someday we will be more than words in the dark.”
― Sara Raasch, Snow Like Ashes

“It's easy to fictionalize an issue when you're not aware of the many ways in which you are privileged by it.”
― Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation

“Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Religion is something between you and other people; it’s full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith . . . that’s just between you and God.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“It doesn't take long to persuade each other to stop seeing a person as a person. And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equalizer.”
― Keith Richards

“It’s easier to hold onto a bad idea if you never share it, and it’s harder to defend one if you let it out.”
― Victor LaValle, Big Machine

“And remember: the flesh is as sacred as it is profane.”
― Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove

“When we gather together in the moonlit village ground it is not because of the moon. Every man can see it in his own compound. We come together because it is good for kinsmen to do so. [...] But I fear for you young people because you do not understand how strong is the bond of kinship. You do not know what it is to speak with one voice. And what is the result? An abominable religion has settled among you. A man can now leave his father and his brothers. He can curse the gods of his fathers and his ancestors, like a hunter's dog that suddenly goes mad and turns on his master. I fear for you; I fear for the clan.”
― Achebe Chinua

“I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’ The sun said, ‘it hurts to become.”
― Andrea Gibson

“The sea is better than a mother. You can love your mother, and she still might leave you. You can love or hate the sea, but it will always be there. Forever. The sea has been the center of her life. It has nurtured her and stolen from her, but it has never left.”
― Lisa See, The Island of Sea Women

“Survival is insufficient.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“There where they learned that courage is not the ability to face your fear, heroically, once, but is the strength to do it day after day. Night after night. Faith without end. Love without border.”
― Sunil Yapa, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

“WE SEEK A WORLD IN WHICH THERE IS ROOM FOR MANY WORLDS”
― Sunil Yapa, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

“The poor aren't defeated. We're domesticated.”
― Victor LaValle, Big Machine

“What about an unarmed nineteen-year-old scares an unarmed police officer?”
― Sunil Yapa, Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

“Doubt is the big machine. It grinds up the delusions of women and men.”
― Victor LaValle, Big Machine

“We used to hear the stars, too. When people stopped talking, there was silence. Now you could shut every mouth on the planet and there’d still be a hum. Air-conditioning groaning from the vent beside you. Semi trucks hissing on a highway miles away. A plane complaining ten thousand feet above you.

Silence is an extinct word.

It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“Do you understand? For you, reality is not an external condition. For you, reality is a decision.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“It's the stuff between stars, the space between roots, the thing that makes electricity get up in the morning.

It fucking hates us”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“There was only the quiet that came after all those things. There was only the quiet that came when you were the only one left. Only the quiet that came when you were something strange enough to outsurvive the things that killed or drove away everyone you loved.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Call Down the Hawk

“I was born without a voice, one cold, overcast day in Brooklyn, New York. No one ever spoke of my condition. I did not know I was mute until years later, when I opened my mouth to ask for what I wanted and realized no one could hear me.”
― Etaf Rum, A Woman Is No Man