Nicole > Nicole's Quotes

“If you shut your eyes and are a lucky one, you may see at times a shapeless pool of lovely pale colours suspended in the darkness; then if you squeeze your eyes tighter, the pool begins to take shape, and the colours become so vivid that with another squeeze they must go on fire.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“She asked where he lived.

Second to the right,' said Peter, 'and then straight on till morning.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“Where you tend a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”
― Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Juvenile Fiction, Classics, Family

“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.

"Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“The concept of human rights had been invented by people who were thinking only of human beings”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“I think hunting used to be important for human survival. Thats no longer the case, but they can't stop. A human being, perhaps, is made up of many nonsensical movements. But they've forgotten the movements necessary for life. These humans are manipulated by what remains of their memories.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“Time could not be compared with any sort of food: nibble at it as greedily as you liked, there was never any less of it. Knut felt powerless in the face of time. Time was a huge ice block made of loneliness.”
― Yōko Tawada, Memoirs of a Polar Bear

“All my life,” she said, “I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me. Please. Please let me help you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Vasya felt cold despite the steam. “Why would I choose to die?” “It is easy to die,” replied the bannik. “Harder to live.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Every time you take one path, you must live with the memory of the other: of a life left unchosen. Decide as seems best, one course or the other; each way will have its bitter with its sweet.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“You cannot take vengeance on a whole people because of the doings of a few wicked men.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“I would have to find something else to bury here and I wished it could be Charles.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold . . .” The pillow seemed to sink a little, and Johnny died.”
― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“Something else is hurting you—that’s why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can’t think.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“I walked around the block twice, passed 200 people and failed to see a human being.”
― Charles Bukowski, Tales of Ordinary Madness

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Never judge anyone by another's opinions. We all have different sides that we show to different people.”
― Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls

“Love shouldn't make a beggar of one. I wouldn't want love if I had to beg for it, to barter or qualify it. And I should despise it if anyone ever begged for my love. Love is something that must be given -- it can't be bought with words or pity, or even reason.”
― Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls

“People parted, years passed, they met again- and the meeting proved no reunion, offered no warm memories, only the acid knowledge that time had passed and things weren't as bright or attractive as they had been.”
― Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls

“Yes, there's one thing I do want. I want to be aware of the minutes and the seconds, and to make each one count.”
― Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls

“...when you’re young you think you’ll always be young. Then one day you suddenly wake up and you’re over fifty. And the names in the obituary columns are no longer anonymous old people. They’re your contemporaries and friends.”
― Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, 'She wants her cup of stars.'

Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course.

'Her little cup,' the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. 'It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk.' The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, 'You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?'

Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“Justice," she said. " I've heard that word. It's a cold world. I tried it out," she said, still speaking in that low voice. "I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic.”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“Why did you make me want to live? Why did you do that to me?”
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

“If a man has to say trust me, Gogu conveyed, it's a sure sign you cannot. Trust him, that is. Trust is a thing you know without words.”
― Juliet Marillier, Wildwood Dancing