Mal > Mal's Quotes

“I nodded, looking at Rachel with respect. "You hit the Lord of the Titans in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush.”
― Rick Riordan

“There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. He isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him, and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyze. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there. Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.”
― Bob Marley

“I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Blue-Eyed Devil

“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

“Gods know about fading. They know about being forgotten over centuries. The idea of ceasing to exist altogether terrifies us. In fact- well, Zeus would not like me sharing this information, and if you tell anyone, I will deny I ever said it-but the truth is we gods are a little in awe of you mortals. You spend your whole lives knowing you will die. No matter how many friends and relatives you have, your puny existences will quickly be forgotten. How do you cope with it? Why are you not running around constantly screaming and pulling your hair out? Your bravery, I must admit, is quite admirable.”
― Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle

“A father should do more - a father should give more to his children than he takes.”
― Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle

“Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversations was flow.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child's curiosity and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning he is offered special coaching for his scholastic coaching for his scholastic difficulties.”
― Alice Duer Miller

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, you can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise, you would threaten the man. Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors not for jobs or accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

“If you're waiting until you feel talented enough to make it, you'll never make it.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Those with less curiosity or ambition just mumble that God works in mysterious ways. I intend to catch him in the act.”
― Damien Echols, Life After Death

“Peeta, you were supposed to wake me after a couple of hours," I say.

"For what? Nothing's going on here," he says. "Besides, I like watching you sleep. You don't scowl. Improves your looks a lot."

This, of course, brings on a scowl that makes him grin.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Then he said: don't you know? I am trying to make you great.

And I said: I do not want to be great, I want to be loved.”
― Sue Zhao

“The best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives, and they break our hearts in worse ways.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“They created a strange tableau: rabid boy, trapped girl, bombed-out building. It suggested a tale that could only end in tragedy. Star-crossed lovers meeting their fate. A revenge story turned in on itself. A war saga that took no prisoners.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

“What I feel for you can’t be conveyed in phrasal combinations; It either screams out loud or stays painfully silent but I promise — it beats words. It beats worlds.”
― Katherine Mansfield

“You have to die a few times before you can really
live.”
― Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“In Summation
A poem by Taylor Swift

At this hearing
I stand before my fellow members of the Tortured Poets Department
With a summary of my findings
A debrief, a detailed rewinding
For the purpose of warning
For the sake of reminding

As you might all unfortunately recall
I had been struck with a case of a restricted humanity
Which explains my plea here today of temporary i n s a n i t y

You see, the pendulum swings
Oh, the chaos it brings
Leads the caged beast to do the most curious things

Lovers spend years denying what’s ill fated
Resentment rotting away
galaxies we created

Stars placed and glued
meticulously by hand
next to the ceiling fan

Tried wishing on comets.
Tried dimming the shine.
Tried to orbit his planet.
Some stars never align.

And in one conversation, I tore down the whole sky

Spring sprung forth with dazzling freedom hues
Then a crash from the skylight bursting through
Something old, someone hallowed, who told me he could be brand new

And so I was out of the oven
and into the microwave
Out of the slammer and into a tidal wave
How gallant to save the empress from her gilded tower
Swinging a sword he could barely lift
But loneliness struck at that fateful hour
Low hanging fruit on his wine stained lips

He never even scratched the surface of me.

None of them did.

“In summation, it was not a love affair!”
I screamed while bringing my fists to my coffee ringed desk
It was a mutual manic phase.
It was self harm.
It was house and then cardiac arrest.

A smirk creeps onto this poet’s face
Because it’s the worst men that I write best.

And so I enter into evidence
My tarnished coat of arms
My muses, acquired like bruises
My talismans and charms
The tick, tick, tick of love bombs
My veins of pitch black ink

All’s fair in love and poetry
Sincerely,
The Chairman
of The Tortured Poets Department”
― Taylor Swift

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If you're anything like me,
You bite your nails,
And laugh when you're nervous.
You promise people the world,
because that's what they want from you.
You like giving them what they want...
But darling, you need to stop,

If you're anything like me,
You knock on wood every time you make plans.
You cross your fingers, hold your breath,
Wish on lucky numbers and eyelashes
Your superstitions were the lone survivors of the shipwreck.
Rest In Peace, to your naive bravado...
If life gets too good now,
Darling, it scares you.

If you're anything like me,
You never wanted to lock your door,
Your secret garden gate or your diary drawer
Didn't want to face the you you don't know anymore
For fear she was much better before...
But Darling, now you have to.

If you're anything like me,
There's a justice system in your head
For names you'll never speak again,
And you make your ruthless rulings.
Each new enemy turns to steel
They become the bars that confine you,
In your own little golden prison cell...
But Darling, there is where you meet yourself.

If you're anything like me
You've grown to hate your pride
To love your thighs
And no amount of friends at 25
Will fill the empty seats
At the lunch tables of your past
The teams that picked you last...
But Darling, you keep trying.

If you're anything like me,
You couldn't recognize the face of your love
Until they stripped you of your shiny paint
Threw your victory flag away
And you saw the ones who wanted you anyway...
Darling, later on you will thank your stars
for that frightful day.

If you're anything like me,
I'm sorry.

But Darling, it's going to be okay.”
― Taylor Swift

“To the glistening eastern sea, I give you Queen Lucy the Valiant. To the great western woods, King Edmund the Just. To the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle. And to the clear northern skies, I give you King Peter the Magnificent. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen of Narnia. May your wisdom grace us until the stars rain down from the heavens.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

“It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“She closes her eyes. He probably won’t come back, she thinks. Or he will, differently. What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.
You should go, she says. I’ll always be here. You know that.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People