β
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
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Mahatma Gandhi
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Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.
"After all this time?"
"Always," said Snape.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
β
Thomas Edison'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)
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We read to know we're not alone.
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William Nicholson (Shadowlands: A Play)
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If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
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C.S. Lewis
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We're all human, aren't we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
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Libraries were full of ideasβperhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.
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Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass (Throne of Glass, #1))
β
Weβre all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdnessβand call it loveβtrue love.
β
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Robert Fulghum (True Love)
β
Remember, we're madly in love, so it's all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it.
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Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
β
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
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Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
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β
Albert Einstein
β
So it's not gonna be easy. It's going to be really hard; we're gonna have to work at this everyday, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, everyday. You and me... everyday.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)
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I would have come for you. And if I couldn't walk, I'd crawl to you, and no matter how broken we were, we'd fight our way out together-knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that's what we do. We never stop fighting.
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Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
β
So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
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β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
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.
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β
Lisa Kleypas (Blue-Eyed Devil (Travises, #2))
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All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.
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Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry (The Little Prince)
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The town was paper, but the memories were not.
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John Green (Paper Towns)
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I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.
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Jane Austen (Persuasion)
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Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we're quoting.
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John Green
β
If you were half as funny as you think you are, you'd be twice as funny as you really are.
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H.N. Turteltaub (The Sacred Land (Hellenic Traders, #3))
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And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
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Friedrich Nietzsche
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Who said nights were for sleep?
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Marilyn Monroe
β
It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
β
Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were "I go to seek a Great Perhaps." That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
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β
Mark Twain
β
In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.
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β
Terry Pratchett
β
Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that youβve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you canβt wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid itβs like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didnβt exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long dayβs work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, thereβs no need for continuous conversation, but you find youβre quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that thereβs a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure thatβs so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.
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β
Bob Marley
β
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
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β
Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles")
β
I'm in love with you," he said quietly.
"Augustus," I said.
"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.
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β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.
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β
Emily BrontΓ« (Wuthering Heights)
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I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.
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β
Marilyn Monroe
β
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
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β
Charles Bukowski
β
Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!
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β
J.R.R. Tolkien
β
Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men.
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β
Neil Gaiman
β
You said you were going for a walk!? What kind of walk takes six hours?"
"A long one?
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Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
β
If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together... there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you.
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β
Carter Crocker
β
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
β
β
E.B. White
β
Why fit in when you were born to stand out?
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β
Dr. Seuss
β
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
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β
Carl Sagan (Cosmos)
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If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were.
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β
Kahlil Gibran
β
Words were different when they lived inside of you.
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β
Benjamin Alire SΓ‘enz (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1))
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From childhood's hour I have not been. As others were, I have not seen. As others saw, I could not awaken. My heart to joy at the same tone. And all I loved, I loved alone.
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β
Edgar Allan Poe
β
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
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β
James Baldwin
β
You haven't got a letter on yours," George observed. "I suppose she thinks you don't forget your name. But we're not stupid-we know we're called Gred and Forge.
β
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter, #1))
β
They didnβt agree on much. In fact, they didnβt agree on anything. They fought all the time and challenged each other ever day. But despite their differences, they had one important thing in common. They were crazy about each other.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
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I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.
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β
Joshua Slocum (Sailing Alone around the World)
β
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.
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β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
Investigation?" Isabelle laughed. "Now we're detectives? Maybe we should all have code names."
"Good idea," said Jace. "I shall be Baron Hotschaft Von Hugenstein.
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Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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I think we dream so we donβt have to be apart for so long. If weβre in each otherβs dreams, we can be together all the time.
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A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh (Winnie-the-Pooh, #1))
β
Books are for people who wish they were somewhere else.
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β
Mark Twain
β
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so muchβthe wheel, New York, wars and so onβwhilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than manβfor precisely the same reasons.
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Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikerβs Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
β
To douchebags!" he said, gesturing to Brad. "And to girls that break your heart," he bowed his head to me. His eyes lost focus. "And to the absolute fucking horror of losing your best friend because you were stupid enough to fall in love with her.
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β
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
β
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
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β
Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)
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Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.
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β
Jodi Picoult (My Sisterβs Keeper)
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One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
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β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship)
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The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.
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β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?
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β
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
β
As if you were on fire from within.
The moon lives in the lining of your skin.
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β
Pablo Neruda
β
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
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Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)
β
He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.
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β
Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
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You see things; you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?
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George Bernard Shaw (Back to Methuselah)
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It hurts to let go. Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't coma back. You're left so alone that you can't explain. Damn, there's nothing like that, is there? I've been there and you have too. You're nodding your head.
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β
Henry Rollins (The Portable Henry Rollins)
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If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.
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β
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
β
It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys.
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β
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
β
Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
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H. Jackson Brown Jr.
β
There is no such thing as bad people. Weβre all just people who sometimes do bad things.
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Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us, #1))
β
And all the books you've read have been read by other people. And all the songs you've loved have been heard by other people. And that girl that's pretty to you is pretty to other people. and that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing 'unity.
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β
Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
β
Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?" Mo had said..."As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells...and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower...both strange and familiar.
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β
Cornelia Funke (Inkspell (Inkworld, #2))
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We are all alone, born alone, die alone, andβin spite of True Romance magazinesβwe shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonelyβat least, not all the timeβbut essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.
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Hunter S. Thompson (The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967)
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Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall.
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β
Jodi Picoult
β
I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.
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β
Emily BrontΓ« (Wuthering Heights)
β
We didn't talk about anything heavy or light. We were just there together. And that was enough
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Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)
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We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again.
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β
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
β
Honestly, if you were any slower, youβd be going backward.
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β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2))
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We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.
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β
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
β
I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.
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β
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
β
I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.
β
β
Stephen King
β
Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars, points of light and reason. ...And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldnβt see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason, for anything.
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β
Stephenie Meyer (New Moon (The Twilight Saga, #2))
β
Albus Severus," Harry said quietly, so that nobody but Ginny could hear, and she was tactful enough to pretend to be waving to Rose, who was now on the train, "you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew.
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β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7))
β
We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.
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β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices, #2))
β
Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy. Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we're related for better or for worse...and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.
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β
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
β
If people refuse to look at you in a new light and they can only see you for what you were, only see you for the mistakes you've made, if they don't realize that you are not your mistakes, then they have to go.
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β
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
β
The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.
β
β
Stephen King
β
Weβre all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if youβve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect thereβs no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isnβt until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problemsβthe ones that make you truly who you areβthat weβre ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what youβre looking for. Youβre looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: it's got to be the right wrong personβsomeone you lovingly gaze upon and think, βThis is the problem I want to have.β
I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.
β
β
Andrew Boyd (Daily Afflictions: The Agony of Being Connected to Everything in the Universe)
β
Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw.
β
β
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
β
Why were you lurking under our window?"
"Yes - yes, good point, Petunia! What were you doing under our windows, boy?"
"Listening to the news," said Harry in a resigned voice.
His aunt and uncle exchanged looks of outrage.
"Listening to the news! Again?"
"Well, it changes every day, you see," said Harry.
β
β
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5))
β
I fell in love with you, smartass, because you were one of usβbecause you werenβt afraid of me, and you decided to end your spectacular victory by throwing that piece of bone at Amarantha like a javelin. I felt Cassianβs spirit beside me in that moment, and could have sworn I heard him say, βIf you donβt marry her, you stupid prick, I will.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
β
When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.
β
β
John Green (Paper Towns)
β
Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
β
β
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
β
You could have fooled me. Everytime I called you, Luke said you were sick. I figured you were avoiding me. Again."
"I wasn't. I did want to talk to you. I've been thinking about you all the time."
"I've been thinking about you, too."
"I really was sick. I swear. I almost died back there on the ship, you know."
"I know. Everytime you almost die, I almost die myself.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments, #2))
β
The real story of the Fleece: there were these two children of Zeus, Cadmus and Europa, okay? They were about to get offered up as human sacrifices, when they prayed to Zeus to save them. So Zeus sent this magical flying ram with golden wool, which picked them up in Greece and carried them all the way to Colchis in Asia Minor. Well, actually it carried Cadmus. Europa fell off and died along the way, but that's not important."
"It was probably important to her.
β
β
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
β
Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw Jace shoot her a look of white rage - but when she glanced at him, he looked as he always did: easy, confident, slightly bored.
"In future, Clarissa," he said, "it might be wise to mention that you already have a man in your bed, to avoid such tedious situations."
"You invited him into bed?" Simon demanded, looking shaken.
"Ridiculous, isn't it?" said Jace. "We would never have all fit."
"I didn't invite him into bed," Clary snapped. "We were just kissing."
"Just kissing?" Jace's tone mocked her with its false hurt. "How swiftly you dismiss our love.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
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He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we canβt know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumiβs note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.
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John Green (Looking for Alaska)
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In time, the hurt began to fade and it was easier to just let it go. At least I thought it was. But in every boy I met in the next few years, I found myself looking for you, and when the feelings got too strong, I'd write you another letter. But I never sent them for fear of what I might find. By then, you'd gone on with your life and I didn't want to think about you loving someone else. I wanted to remember us like we were that summer. I didn't ever want to lose that.
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Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
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I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.
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Franz Kafka
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I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.
I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.
I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.
I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.
I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.
I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.
I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.
I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.
I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.
I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
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Neil Gaiman (American Gods (American Gods, #1))
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Peeta, you said at the interview youβd had a crush on me forever. When did forever start?
Oh, letβs see. I guess the first day of school. We were five. You had on a red plaid dress and your hair...it was in two braids instead of one. My father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up."
Your father? Why?"
He said, βSee that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner.'"
What? Youβre making that up!"
No, true story. And I said, 'A coal miner? Why did she want a coal miner if she couldβve had you?' And he said, 'Because when he sings...even the birds stop to listen.
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Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
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Sonnet XVII
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way than this:
where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
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Pablo Neruda
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Clary,
Despite everything, I can't bear the thought of this ring being lost forever, any more then I can bear the thought of leaving you forever. And though I have no choice about the one, at least I can choose about the other. I'm leaving you our family ring because you have as much right to it as I do.
I'm writing this watching the sun come up. You're asleep, dreams moving behind your restless eyelids. I wish I knew what you were thinking. I wish I could slip into your head and see the world the way you do. I wish I could see myself the way you do. But maybe I dont want to see that. Maybe it would make me feel even more than I already do that I'm perpetuating some kind of Great Lie on you, and I couldn't stand that.
I belong to you. You could do anything you wanted with me and I would let you. You could ask anything of me and I'd break myself trying to make you happy. My heart tells me this is the best and greatest feeling I have ever had. But my mind knows the difference between wanting what you can't have and wanting what you shouldn't want. And I shouldn't want you.
All night I've watched you sleeping, watched the moonlight come and go, casting its shadows across your face in black and white. I've never seen anything more beautiful. I think of the life we could have had if things were different, a life where this night is not a singular event, separate from everything else that's real, but every night. But things aren't different, and I can't look at you without feeling like I've tricked you into loving me.
The truth no one is willing to say out loud is that no one has a shot against Valentine but me. I can get close to him like no one else can. I can pretend I want to join him and he'll believe me, up until that last moment where I end it all, one way or another. I have something of Sebastian's; I can track him to where my father's hiding, and that's what I'm going to do. So I lied to you last night. I said I just wanted one night with you. But I want every night with you. And that's why I have to slip out of your window now, like a coward. Because if I had to tell you this to your face, I couldn't make myself go.
I don't blame you if you hate me, I wish you would. As long as I can still dream, I will dream of you.
_Jace
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Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))