Jea Song > Jea's Quotes

“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“Mercy." He said the word as if he were tasting something unfamiliar. "I could be merciful.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone

“Fight me as long as you're able.
You will find I have far more practice with eternity”
― Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone

“What happened yesterday, or last week, or ten years ago … those things aren’t important. What really matters is now, here, today, tomorrow, next year. Some people fall in love at first sight and stay together for ever, other people marry their childhood sweetheart and end up in the divorce courts. You can't predict life, Jonah, you can only truly try to make the best of whatever it throws at you.´”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone

“We do this most days; use technology to make it feel as if we’re in the same room rather than on opposite sides of the world.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“I can’t shake the feeling that someone or something will stop me, grab ahold of my arm and tell me I can’t go, but no one does. I’m on my own. Captain of my own ship, albeit one who has no idea where she’s navigating toward.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“I started to enjoy the writing process itself, to remember how it felt to create worlds different to mine, to spend time thinking about a story that isn’t my own.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“I think I’ve been trying too hard to be everything to everyone.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“I catch a glimpse of how much I've withdrawn from her. I know she doesn't for a minute resent it or blame me, but it must have been hard on her; she's lost me as well as Freddie, in a way. I make a mental note that one day, when I am better, I'll tell her how sometimes, on the dark days, she's been the only light I could see.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“I’m dozing, in that blissed out state you only reach at the end of special days with special people.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“Everyone around me is moving forward, away from me.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“MOST OF LIFE’S defining moments happen unexpectedly; sometimes they slide past you completely unnoticed until afterward, if at all. The last time your child is small enough to carry on your hip. An eye roll exchanged with a stranger who becomes your life-long best friend. The summer job you apply for on impulse and stay at for the next twenty years. Those kinds of things.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“I found the old me, still in here, and the new me sitting right alongside her. We made friends.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“There is something particularly fascinating about seeing places you know in a piece of art - be that in a film, or a photograph, or a painting.”
― Sara Sheridan

“Rizal" is a compulsory course in school, but few teachers make Rizal's novels interesting. If students are taught to enjoy Rizal's works as literature instead of as a lodemine of 'patriotic' allusions I am sure they would not mind reading and rereading the 'Noli me Tangere'.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“The human brain is wired to cope with grief. It knows even as we fall into unfathomably dark places, there will be light again, and if we just keep moving forward in one brave straight line, however slowly, we’ll find our way back again.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“I’ve learned not to question my own actions and thoughts too deeply though, sometimes you just have to go with whatever gets you through the day.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“Billions of humans, all of us scurrying around the planet, falling in and out of love with each other for no reason explicable by logic or numbers or common sense. How unaccountably strange we are.”
― Josie Silver, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

“I feel sad for him. Sad for the boy bound to the killer. I am sad for the youth betrayed by their leaders for symbols and flags and war and power.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“We come from the land, give our love and labor to her, and she nurtures us in return. When we die, we return to the land. In a way, she owns us. Palestine owns us and we belong to her”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“For if life had taught her anything, it was that healing and peace can begin only with acknowledgment of wrongs committed.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“We're all born with the greatest treasures we'll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“I know she is crying. Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“the reverse side of love is unbearable loss.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“Places I love come back to me like music,
Hush me and heal me when I am very tired;
I see the oak woods at Saxton's flaming
In a flare of crimson by the frost newly fired;
And I am thirsty for the spring in the valley
As for a kiss ungiven and long desired.

I know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton,
A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees,
The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle
Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze,
And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust
With the winer sun drawing cold blue shadows from the trees.

Violet now, in veil on veil of evening,
The hills across from Cromwell grow dreamy and far;
A wood-thrush is singing soft as a viol
In the heart of the hollow where the dark pools are;
The primrose has opened her pale yellow flowers
And heaven is lighting star after star.

Places I love come back to me like music–
Mid-ocean, midnight, the eaves buzz drowsily;
In the ship's deep churning the eerie phosphorescence
Is like the souls of people who were drowned at sea,
And I can hear a man's voice, speaking, hushed , insistent,
At midnight, in mid-ocean, hour on hour to me.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation. "Never let them know they hurt you" was their creed”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“Dear books, please take me to the places where my feet can't take me.”
― H. Midorikawa

“The world is full of beautiful places. Let your heart be one of them.”
― Jenim Dibie

“One can speak best through stories. Things only come alive in this way. This is because such things are the children of our experiences. They are conceived during big events in our lives, born when we begin to reflect on those incidents and then grow with us as our appreciation for the memories that brought them into being also lives and thrives.”
― Ali Hussain, A Childhood Between Rivers and Mountains