Sydney King > Sydney's Quotes

“She says that people who wonder how you can have hope in seemingly hopeless situations, like a death camp, confuse hope with idealism. Idealism expects everything to be fair or easy or good. She says it's a defense mechanism not unlike denial or delusion. Hope, she says, does not deny the evil but is a response to it." I was beginning to see that hope was not just wishful thinking. It did take the facts and the obstacles into account, but it did not let them overwhelm or stop us. Certainly, this was true in many seemingly hopeless situations.”
― Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for an Endangered Planet

“I'll probably never see you again," continued Maylee, and one tear overspilled, tracking through the fine flour on her cheek. She leaned into Viv's touch and added fiercely, almost angrily, "But I don't regret it.”
― Travis Baldree

“This has gone on longer than I anticipated, but I know what it feels like to lose someone you love. To feel as if you're left behind, or like your life is in shambles and there's no guidebook to tell you how to stitch it back together.
But time will slowly heal you, as it is doing for me. There are good days and there are difficult days. Your grief will never fully fade; it will always be with you -- a shadow you carry in your soul -- but it will become fainter as your life becomes brighter. You will learn to live outside of it again, as impossible as that may sound. Others who share your pain will also help you heal. Because you are not alone. Not in you fear or you grief or your hopes or your dreams.
You are not alone.”
― Rebecca Ross, Letters of Enchantment

“Kindness is never a mistake," said the Elder Steward. "Somewhere in the heart it is always remembered.”
― C.S. Pacat, Dark Rise

“The last time a slaughter had taken his home from him, he'd been the one stupid with emotion, stumbling through it, making mistakes that had gotten others killed. Now he knew: Don't grieve. Move. One foot after another, that's how you survive.”
― C.S. Pacat, Dark Rise

“There’s no way to un-know the fact that someone is dying. It eats away all the normal, and leaves something wrong and rotten in its place.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“What do you want? Belbalm had asked her. Safety, comfort, to feel unafraid. I want to live to grow old, Alex thought as she pulled the curtains closed. I want to sit on my porch and drink foul-smelling tea and yell at passersby. I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.”
― Leigh Bardugo

“No I just... what's the point, then? To all of this? To any of it? If nothing we do matters, then why should we try at all?" He was spiraling, he knew. Rattled and spiraling. His skin was like ice and it had nothing to do with the air around him. He clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering.
"Because it's your life," Nelson said, coming to the other side of him. "It is what you make of it. No, it's not always fair. No, it's not always good. It burns and tears, and there are times when it crushes you beyond recognition. Some people fight against it. Others... can't, though I don't think they can be blamed for that. Giving up is easy. Picking yourself up isn't. But we have to believe that if we do, we can take another step.”
― T.J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door

“It's the entire point!" Wallace exclaimed. "It's not about any one person. It's about all of us, and what we do for one another. The door doesn't discriminate. It's there for everyone who is brave enough to look up at it. Some people lose their way, but that's not their fault. They're scared. My god, of course they are. How could they not be? Everyone loses their way at some point, and it's not just because of their mistakes or the decisions they make. It's because they're horribly, wonderfully human. And the one thing I've learned about being human is that we can't do this alone. When we're lost, we need help to try to find our way again. We have a chance here, to do something important, something never done before.”
― T.J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door

“Niceness is good manners, and stopping to give someone directions, and smiling at the overworked cashier at the supermarket. These are all good things, but they have nothing to do with what's underneath. Niceness is all about what we do when other people are looking. Kindness, on the other hand, runs deep. Kindness is what happens when no one's looking.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“I can't transform the world, Jamie. The world's too big and too messy and too stubborn."
"Who said anything about transforming the world?" He shrugged. "What about just making it a little better? And then a little better? And then a little more, until, one day, maybe long after we're gone, it has transformed? You deserve more than what you're allowing yourself to have.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“Danger rarely wore a monstrous face and wielded a pitchfork. No, danger came most often in the form of people like Edward, the nice people whose niceness only went so deep, who believed they were more deserving of power and respect than anyone who was a little bit different. And she would never know how many other nice, ordinary people out there were as ugly as Edward underneath.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“Remember what I told you about need versus want? We don't need you because that implies you had to fix something in us. We were never broken. We want you, Wallace. Every piece. Every part. Because we're family. Can you see the difference?”
― T.J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door

“Violence harms the one who does it as much as the one who receives it. You could cut down a tree with an axe. The axe does violence to the tree, and escapes unharmed. Is that how you see it? Wood is soft compared to steel, but the sharp steel is dulled as it chops, and the sap of the tree will rust and pit it. The mighty axe does violence to the helpless tree, and is harmed by it. So it is with men, though the harm is in the spirit.”
― Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World

“We never really talked much or even looked at each other, but it didn't matter because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe even more intimate than eye contact anyway. I mean, anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“You remember your first love because they show you, prove to you, that you can love and be loved, that nothing in this world is deserved except for love, that love is both how you become a person and why.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“One of the challenges with pain—physical or psychic—is that we can really only approach it through metaphor. It can’t be represented the way a table or a body can. In some ways pain is the opposite of language.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“And we're such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume it isn't real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracise and minimise. The term chronic pain captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down

“There is one rule, above all others, for being a man. Whatever comes, face it on your feet.”
― Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt

“It is all right to hate them, Egwene. It is. They deserve it. But it isn’t all right to let them make you like they are.”
― Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt

“They were all watching him, all waiting. Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain. He made his decision.”
― Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt

“I see you” came out of Tristan’s mouth before he had fully decided what to say, which was probably best, as it might have been “I don’t want to be alone,” or worse, “I don’t know what I want,” both of which Callum would know by looking. What a terrible thing it was to be so tragically exposed.
Callum shifted away from the door, beckoning him in with a motion.
Wordlessly, Tristan stepped inside.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“Sacrifice has magic of its own," he said. "The decision to do something is itself a change, a rupture to the state of the world's natural order. Would things happen in the caster's favor regardless of interference? Yes, of course, probability meaning that all outcomes are, conceptually, possible," Dalton said, droning on methodically. "But to set one's sights on one particular outcome is to necessitate a shift in some direction, enduring and irreversible. We study the realm of consciousness because we understand that to decide something, to weigh a cost and accept its consequences, is to forcibly alter the world in some tangible way. That is a magic as true and as real as any other.”
― Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six

“Life is not always a list of problems to be solved; sometimes it’s actually made up of fun and ease and beauty and laughter.”
― Tara Schuster, Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who's Been There

“The sooner you can get comfortable with the ambiguity of two things being true at the same time, the sooner you will enjoy all parts of your life, even the not-so-great ones, because you know that's not the whole story.”
― Tara Schuster, Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who's Been There

“The thing about moving," he said, "is it's a good way to shake loose whatever old baggage you have, or the old things that were true about yourself, and decide what you want to be true about yourself. It's the best way to make new habits that serve you.”
― Tara Schuster, Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who's Been There

“When people see tears, they stop listening to your hands or your words or anything else you have to say. And it doesn't matter if the tears are angry or sad, frightened or frustrated. All they see is a girl crying.”
― Victoria Schwab, Gallant

“Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me.
I would write the words a thousand times if they'd be strong enough to hold you here.”
― Victoria Schwab, Gallant

“My daddy had told me once that people were gonna give me shit all my life. The monster had told Joe that his family didn't want him anymore. We'd have to live with that, those things that were whispered in our ears. Maybe we'd never be free of those shadows. Not completely.
But we'd still fight like hell.
And maybe that's all that mattered.”
― T.J. Klune, Wolfsong

“Harrow said, with some difficulty: "I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it."
"Yes you can, it's just less great and less hot," said Gideon."
"Fuck you, Nav—”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth