Maze Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Maze. Here they are! All 100 of them:

β€œ
Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β€œ
A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.
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Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1))
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If you ain’t scared… you ain’t human.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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You are the shuckiest shuck faced shuck in the world!
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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Kill me. If you’ve ever been my friend, kill me.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (Maze Runner, #3))
β€œ
i felt her absence. it was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth. you wouldn't need to run to the mirror to know they were gone
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β€œ
Shouldn't someone give a pep talk or something?" Minho asked, pulling Thomas's attention away from Alby. "Go ahead," Newt replied. Minho nodded and faced the crowd. "Be careful," he said dryly. "Don't die.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
It's kind of hard to ask a dead guy what he did wrong.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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Just follow me and run like your life depends on it. Because it does.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
Minho looked at Thomas, a serious expression on his face. "If I don't see you on the other side," he said in a sappy voice, "remember that I love you.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
β€œ
I've been shucked and gone to heaven.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
I promised him!" he screamed, realizing even as he did so that his voice was laced with something wrong. Almost insanity. "I promised I'd save him, take him home! I promised him!
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
Awww," Minho said. "That's almost as sweet as that time she slammed the end of a spear into your shuck face.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
β€œ
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
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Cormac McCarthy (The Road)
β€œ
KILL ME!" And then Newt's eyes cleared, as if he'd gained one last trembling gasp of sanity, and his voice softened. "Please, Tommy. Please." With his heart falling into a black abyss, Thomas pulled the trigger.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
β€œ
Maybe you should just press the button
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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WICKED is good
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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You get lazy, you get sad. Start givin' up. Plain and simple.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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Rose took my nose, I suppose
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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Dude, you tried to slice my you-know-what's off!" Thomas laughed, something that he hadn't done in a long time. He welcomed it happily. "Too bad I didn't. Could've saved the world from future little Minhos.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
β€œ
Good that.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
If you're going to decipher a hidden code from a complex set of different mazes, I'm pretty sure you need a girl's brain running the show.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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It was you and me, Tom. We did this to them. To us.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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Sometimes they do things to make me do the opposite of what they think, I think, they think, I am going to do.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
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I see now that the path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of beingβ€”one of many waysβ€”and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.
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Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
β€œ
There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive.
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Philip K. Dick (VALIS)
β€œ
Holy crap, I’m scared.” β€œHoly crap, you’re human. You should be scared.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
I don't think there is a right or wrong anymore. Only horrible and not-quite-so-horrible.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
β€œ
The betrayal meant he couldn't trust her anymore, and his heart told him he couldn't forgive her.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β€œ
You're the shuckiest shuck-faced shuck there ever was.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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What no one tells you is that the road to accomplishing your goals isn’t a straight line; it looks more like a corn maze. You stopped, you went, you backed up, and took a few wrong turns along the way, but the important thing you had to remember was that there was an exit. Somewhere.
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Mariana Zapata (The Wall of Winnipeg and Me)
β€œ
Thats called hypocrisy, you shuck face piece of -!
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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What's going on?" Newt asked, looking back and forth between Thomas and Aris. "Why're you guys looking at each other like you just fell in love?
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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Anybody else wanna pee their pants and cry for mommy?
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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No. I kind of accepted it, in a way. That saving you was worth losing what we might've had.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they’d loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin?
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Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)
β€œ
I just...feel like I need to save everyone. To redeem myself.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning. The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
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Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
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But there was something about the largest object in the solar system vanishing that tended to disrupt normal schedules.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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Such a display of death - how could it be considered a victory?
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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Yeah, right," Minho said. "And Frypan's gonna start having little babies, Winston'll get rid of his monster acne, and Thomas here'll actually smile for once." Thomas turned to Minho and exaggerated a fake smile. "There, you happy?" "Dude," he responded. "You are one ugly shank.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β€œ
Minho snickered and leaned back in his chair. β€œMan, you are one butt-load of sunshine, let me tell you.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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They called you the Glue" "The Glue?" "Yeah. Probably because you're kind of the glue that holds us all together
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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Thank you for being my friends
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
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What mazes there are in this world. The branches of trees, the filigree of roots, the matrix of crystals, the streets her father recreated in his models... None more complicated than the human brain, Etienne would say, what may be the most complex object in existence; one wet kilogram within which spin universes.
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Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
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I can still kick your pony-lovin' butt with twice this much pain." Thomas shrugged, "I do love ponies. Wish I could eat one right now.
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James Dashner
β€œ
I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling
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Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
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He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.
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William Golding (Lord of the Flies)
β€œ
He turned to look just in time to see the rain start falling out as if the storm had finally decided to weep with shame for what it had done to them.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β€œ
It is safer to search in the maze than to remain in a cheeseless situation
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Spencer Johnson (Who Moved My Cheese?)
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She smiled for the first time, and he almost had to look away, as if something that nice didn’t belong in such a glum and gray place, as if he had no right to look at her expression.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
Shouldn't someone give a pep talk or something?' Minho asked... "Go ahead," Newt replied. Minho nodded and faced the crowd. 'Be careful,' he said dryly. 'Don't die.' Thomas would have laughed if he could, but he was too scared for it to come out. 'Great. We're all bloody inspired,' Newt answered.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
Too bad we don't have a flashlight." "Thanks for stating the obvious, Mr. Thomas," Minho replied.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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Hunger. It's like an animal trapped inside you, Thomas thought.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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Didn't know you could measure distance so well with nothing but you bloody eyeballs
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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So let's say our bloody goodbyes, and then you can promise to remember me from my good old days. "I can't do that," Minho said.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
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And you, Tommy” the boy said, lowering his voice. β€œYou’ve got a lot of nerve coming here and asking me to leave with you. A lot of bloody nerve. The sight of you makes me sick
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
β€œ
She led the way. Eyeless sockets of the dead seemed to stare at them as they passed. "These are cool," Dan decided. "Maybe I could-" "No, Dan," Amy said. "You can't collect human bones." "Awww.
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Rick Riordan (The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues, #1))
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Sometimes I wonder," Thomas murmured. "Wonder what?" "If being alive matters. If being dead might be a lot easier.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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Remember what it's like to be human,
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Rick Riordan (The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo, #3))
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She paused. That's just my way of saying I would've killed you if you'd died.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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Can you do that?” Thomas asked. β€œHuh?” β€œKill someone three times.” β€œI’d figure out a way.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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I was just kidding, shuck-face," Minho said. "Let's all go over there. She could have an army of psycho girl ninjas hiding in that shack of hers." "Psycho girl ninjas?" Newt repeated, his voice showing he was surprised, if not annoyed, by Minho's additude.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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Ah, my Knight in Shining Armor. What, you don't think I can fend for myself?
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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sometimes you don't look very hard for things you don't believe will or can happen.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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He whipped out his sheet, then pulled it over himself and wrapped it tightly around his face like an old woman in a shawl. 'How do I look?' 'Like the ugliest shanky girl I’ve ever seen,' Minho responded. 'You better thank the gods above you were born a dude.' 'Thanks.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β€œ
Please, Tommy, Please.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
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All the same, Thomas now had a plan. As bad as it was, he had a plan. They needed more clues about the code. They needed MEMORIES. So he was going to get stung by a Griever. Go through the Changing. On purpose.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
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Kate Chopin (The Awakening)
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Before I got here, I thought that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it didn't exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied by the last words of the already dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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He pulled the envelope out of his pocket and ripped it open, then took out the slip of paper. The soft lights that ringed the mirror lit up the message in a warm glow. It was two short sentences: " KILL ME. IF YOU'VE EVER BEEN MY FRIEND, KILL ME.
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
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The diabolical thing about melancholy is not that it makes you ill but that it makes you conceited and shortsighted; yes almost arrogant. You lapse into bad taste, thinking of yourself as Heine's Atlas, whose shoulders support all the world's puzzles and agonies, as if thousands, lost in the same maze, did not endure the same agonies.
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Hermann Hesse (Peter Camenzind)
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Rose took my nose, I suppose,” he repeated; the bubble of phlegm in his throat made a disgusting crackle. β€œAnd it really blows.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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Tonight, they’d make their stand, once and for all.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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Pain is an interesting thing. You think you have reached your limit and you can’t possibly feel more tortured. Then you discover there is still another level of agony. And another level after that.
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Rick Riordan (The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo, #3))
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What was the point of even having a conversation when words couldn't be trusted?
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
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Shuck it,” Minho responded. β€œI’m tougher than nails. I could still kick your pony-lovin’ butt with twice this pain.” Thomas shrugged. β€œI do love ponies. Wish I could eat one right now.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
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I hated the place, Tommy. I hated every second of every day. And it was all … your … fault!
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
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Quit voting me down before you even think about what I'm saying.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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You’re disgusting when you eat,” Chuck said, sitting on the bench next to him. β€œIt’s like watching a starving pig eat his own klunk.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
He didn't care about the others anymore. The chaos around him seemed to siphon away his humanity, turn him into an animal. All he wanted was to survive, make it to that building, get inside. Live. Gain another day.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β€œ
But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult! The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
”
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Kate Chopin (The Awakening)
β€œ
Oh, I'm good. Seriously, after all these years, you'd think I would stop amazing myself. But here I am, still doing it.
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James Dashner (The Kill Order (The Maze Runner, #0.4))
β€œ
Thomas: Is it [my brain] fixed? Brenda: It worked, judging from the fact that you're not trying to kill us anymore...
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James Dashner (The Death Cure (The Maze Runner, #3))
β€œ
. . . a stone, a leaf, an unfound door; a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh have we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? O waste of lost, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this weary, unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
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Thomas Wolfe (Look Homeward, Angel)
β€œ
Are you a peice of Saran Wrap? No Well then why are you acting so clingy?
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Lisi Harrison (The Clique Ah-mazing Collector's Gift Set (The Clique Summer Collection, #1-5))
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Avoiding other people was his new goal in life.
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James Dashner (The Maze Runner (Maze Runner, #1))
β€œ
...You'd think the little part about them supposedly killing us would be the attention getter.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β€œ
The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It's not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don't know its happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is. It's like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you 'sir'. It just happens.
”
”
Robert McCammon (Boy's Life)
β€œ
When someone is close by, you just know it.
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James Dashner (The Scorch Trials (The Maze Runner, #2))
β€œ
You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves. After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. That’s what I believe. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you β€œsir.” It just happens. These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.
”
”
Robert McCammon (Boy's Life)
β€œ
Who can say if the thoughts you have in your mind as you read these words are the same thoughts I had in my mind as I typed them? We are different, you and I, and the qualia of our consciousnesses are as divergent as two stars at the ends of the universe. And yet, whatever has been lost in translation in the long journey of my thoughts through the maze of civilization to your mind, I think you do understand me, and you think you do understand me. Our minds managed to touch, if but briefly and imperfectly. Does that thought not make the universe seem just a bit kinder, a bit brighter, a bit warmer and more human? We live for such miracles.
”
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Ken Liu (The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories)
β€œ
Amy, Dan, and Nellie were sitting at a table in a conference room, examining reproductions of Franklin documents-some so rare, the librarians told her, the only copies existed in Paris. "Yeah, here's a rare grocery list," Dan muttered. "Wow.
”
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Rick Riordan (The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues, #1))
β€œ
Do you ever think "how did I end up here?" Like you are in a maze and totally lost and it's all your fault because you were the one who made every turn? And you know that there are many routes that could have helped you out, because you hear all the people on the outside of the maze who made it through, and they are laughing and smiling. And sometimes you get a glimpse of them through the hedge. A fleeting shape through the leaves. And they seem so damn happy to have made it and you don't resent them, but you do resent yourself for not having their ability to work it all out. Do you? Or is this maze just for me?
”
”
Matt Haig (The Midnight Library)
β€œ
I didn't do anyting wrong. All I know is I saw two people struggling to get inside these walls and they [Minho and Alby] couldn't make it. To ignore that because of some stupid rule seemed selfish, cowardly, and... well, stupid. If you want to throw me in jail for trying to save someone's [Alby] life, then go ahead. Next time I promise I'll point at them and laugh, then go eat some of Frypan's dinner. -Thomas
”
”
James Dashner (The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1))
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Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze. Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet. Age: five thousand three hundred days. Profession: none, or "starlet" Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze? Why are you hiding, darling? (I Talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling). Where are you riding, Dolores Haze? What make is the magic carpet? Is a Cream Cougar the present craze? And where are you parked, my car pet? Who is your hero, Dolores Haze? Still one of those blue-capped star-men? Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays, And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen! Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts! Are you still dancin', darlin'? (Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts, And I, in my corner, snarlin'). Happy, happy is gnarled McFate Touring the States with a child wife, Plowing his Molly in every State Among the protected wild life. My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair, And never closed when I kissed her. Know an old perfume called Soliel Vert? Are you from Paris, mister? L'autre soir un air froid d'opera m'alita; Son fele -- bien fol est qui s'y fie! Il neige, le decor s'ecroule, Lolita! Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie? Dying, dying, Lolita Haze, Of hate and remorse, I'm dying. And again my hairy fist I raise, And again I hear you crying. Officer, officer, there they go-- In the rain, where that lighted store is! And her socks are white, and I love her so, And her name is Haze, Dolores. Officer, officer, there they are-- Dolores Haze and her lover! Whip out your gun and follow that car. Now tumble out and take cover. Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze. Her dream-gray gaze never flinches. Ninety pounds is all she weighs With a height of sixty inches. My car is limping, Dolores Haze, And the last long lap is the hardest, And I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust.
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Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
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IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you to look off in the wrong direction, distracting your attention so that you won’t notice where the real action is. He draws you into focusing on the turbulent world of his feelings to keep your eyes turned away from the true cause of his abusiveness, which lies in how he thinks. He leads you into a convoluted maze, making your relationship with him a labyrinth of twists and turns. He wants you to puzzle over him, to try to figure him out, as though he were a wonderful but broken machine for which you need only to find and fix the malfunctioning parts to bring it roaring to its full potential. His desire, though he may not admit it even to himself, is that you wrack your brain in this way so that you won’t notice the patterns and logic of his behavior, the consciousness behind the craziness.
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Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
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I've got a few ideas," (Amy) admitted. "But I don't know where we're going in the long term. I mean - have you ever thought about what this ultimate treasure could be?" "Something cool." (Dan) "Oh, that's real helpful. I mean, what could make somebody the most powerful Cahill in history? And why thirty-nine clues?" Dan shrugged. "Thirty-nine is a sweet number. It's thirteen times three. It's also the sum of five prime numbers in a row - 3,5,7,11,13. And if you add the first three powers of three, 3 to the first, 3 to the second, and s to the third, you get thirty-nine." Amy stared at him. "How did you know that?" "What do you mean? It's obvious.
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Rick Riordan (The Maze of Bones (The 39 Clues, #1))
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Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of, the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied only by the last words of the looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends, and a more-than minor life. And then i screwed up and the Colonel screwed up and Takumi screwed up and she slipped through our fingers. And there's no sugar-coating it: She deserved better friends. When she fucked up, all those years ago, just a little girl terrified. into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself. And I could have done that, but I saw where it led for her. So I still believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe in it spite of having lost her. Beacause I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and the Colonel and everyone but herself and her mom in those last moments she spent as a person. I know that she forgives me for being dumb and sacred and doing the dumb and scared thing. I know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her. And here's how I know: I thought at first she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something's meal. What was her-green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs-would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe "the afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just a matter, and matter gets recycled. But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirety. There is a part of her knowable parts. And that parts has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed. Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, One thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed. And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself -those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail. So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Eidson's last words were: "It's very beautiful over there." I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)