Abby > Abby's Quotes

“Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
― Maya Angelou

“But at some point in her passage, the trees began to change. They stretched taller, and the soft, pale bark darkened, roughened. She put her hand to a tree and touched the lichen growing dark green upon brown, and it felt like old cork, dry and crumbling. Here the sun mellowed, took on the cast of late afternoon, and the shadows seemed to fall a bit longer; the forest had sunk into a deeper silence, magnifying what sounds did arise. The sudden, quick crash of a fox bounding through the brush was as loud as the slam of a great wooden door.”
― Malinda Lo, Ash

“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”
― Emily Dickinson

“Gay kids aren’t a “plot point” that you can play with. Gay kids are real, actual kids, teenagers, growing up into awesome adults, and they don’t have the books they need to reflect that. Growing up, my nose was constantly stuck in a book. Growing up as a lesbian, I was told over and over and over by the lack of gayness in said books that I did not exist. That I wasn’t important enough to tell stories about. That I was invisible. Why are we telling our kids this? Why are we telling them that they’re a minority, and they don’t deserve the same rights as straights, that they’re going to grow up in a world that despises them, that the intolerance of humanity will never change, that they’re worthless. It’s not true.”
― Sarah Diemer

“I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can't believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant.
But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK!”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“But I have told the truth. Isn't that ironic? They sent me because I am so good at telling lies. But I have told the truth.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France-a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will be unflyable, stuck in the climb.”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will”
― Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

“You will hear thunder and remember me,
and think: she wanted storms...”
― Anna Akhmatova

“Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.”
― Jane Austen

“It's a curious, wanting thing.”
― Sarah Waters, Fingersmith

“The bad blood rose in me, just like wine.”
― Sarah Waters, Fingersmith

“That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Lebedeva’s eyes shone. “Masha, listen to me. Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy, and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“The old order, it is good for the old. A farmer wants his son to be afraid of beautiful women, so that he will not leave home too soon, so he tells a story about how one drowned his brother’s cousin’s friend in a lake, not because he was a pig who deserved to be drowned, but because beautiful women are bad, and also witches. And it doesn’t matter that she didn’t ask to be beautiful, or to be born in a lake, or to live forever, or to not know how men breathe until they stop doing it.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“You will always go into that tent. You will see her scar and wonder where she got it. You will always be amazed at how one woman can have so much black hair. You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Blue is for cruel bargains; green is for daring what you oughtn’t; violet is for brute force. I will say to you: Coral coaxes; pink insists; red compels. I will say to you: You are dear to me as attar of roses. Please do not get eaten.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Oh, quit that. Blushing is for virgins and Christians.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“But her heart was so cold that she could hold ice in her mouth and it would never melt.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“You were talking to that niche in the wall again, Gwyneth. I saw you."

"Yes, but it's my favorite bit of wall, Gordon. I'd hurt its feelings if I didn't stop and talk to it.”
― Kerstin Gier, Ruby Red

“A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow.”
― Djuna Barnes

“There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. ”
― George Carlin

“There were few things worse than being ordinary, in Evie’s opinion. Ordinary was for suckers.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners

“I am starting a collection of only right-hand gloves. It’s ever so bourgeois to have two.”
― Libba Bray, The Diviners