Tajinder > Tajinder's Quotes

“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

“Afterwards, when Agamemnon would ask him when he would confront the prince of Troy, he would smile his most guileless, maddening smile. “What has Hector ever done to me?”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Achilles’ eyes lift. They are bloodshot and dead. “I wish he had let you all die.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I have done it," she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. A C H I L L E S, it reads. And beside it, P A T R O C L U S.
"Go," she says. "He waits for you."

In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“it always hurts more to have and lose than to not have in the first place.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Deadlines just aren't real to me until I'm staring one in the face.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Name one hero who was happy.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“There was more to say, but for once we did not say it. There would be other times for speaking, tonight and tomorrow and all the days after that. He let go of my hand.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“For you, a thousand times over”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“There is no law that gods must be fair, Achilles,” Chiron said. “And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone. Do you think?”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“There is only one sin. and that is theft... when you tell a lie, you steal someones right to the truth.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated...”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Grief was what you owed the dead for the necessary crime of living on without them.”
― Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire

“Perhaps this is just punishment for those who have been heartless, to understand only when nothing can be undone.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

“For girls, becoming women was inevitability; for boys, becoming men was ambition”
― Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire

“Everything else you can live around, but not death. Death you have to live through.”
― Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire

“Nothing is more tragic than loving someone to the depths of your soul and knowing they cannot and will not ever love you back.”
― Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle

“Things can turn out differently, Apollo. That's the nice thing about being human. We only have one life, but we can choose what kind of story it's going to be.”
― Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle

“Not all monsters were three-ton reptiles with poisonous breath. Many wore human faces.”
― Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle

“Pain is an interesting thing. You think you have reached your limit and you can’t possibly feel more tortured. Then you discover there is still another level of agony. And another level after that.”
― Rick Riordan, The Burning Maze

“Remember what it's like to be human,”
― Rick Riordan, The Burning Maze