Verity Quotes

It's like being in love, discovering your best friend.

I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can't believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant. But mainly, so very, very stupid. I desperately want to grow old.

It was a cruel trick of the universe, thought August, that he only felt human after doing something monstrous.

I mean, most people want to escape. Get out of their heads. Out of their lives. Stories are the easiest way to do that.

But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France-a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will be unflyable, stuck in the climb.

The beautiful thing about books was that anyone could open them.

KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK!

I think the idea of me is better than the reality of me.

You wanted to feel alive, right? It doesn't matter if you're monster or human. Living hurts.

I know it hurts," she said. "So make it worth the pain." "How?" "By not letting go," she said softly. "By holding on, to anger, to hope, or whatever it is that keeps you fighting." You, he thought.

He wasn't made of flesh and bone, or starlight. He was made of darkness.

People are users. It’s a universal truth. Use them, or they’ll use you.

I read somewhere," said Kate, "that people are made of stardust." He dragged his eyes from the sky. "Really?" "Maybe that's what you're made of. Just like us." And despite everything, August smiled.

Why did everyone have to ruin the quiet by asking questions? The truth was a disastrous thing.

She cracked a smile. "So what's your poison?" He sighed dramatically, and let the truth tumble off his tongue. "Life." "Ah," she said ruefully. "That'll kill you.

A whore, we've established that, filthy, it goes without saying, but whatever else the hell I am, I AM NOT ENGLISH.

There were two kinds of monsters, the kind that hunted the streets and the kind that lived in your head. She could fight the first, but the second was more dangerous. It was always, always, always a step ahead.

A word is not the same with one writer as it is with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.

No one is likable from the inside out.

I know it hurts," she said. "So make it worth the pain.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

But I have told the truth. Isn't that ironic? They sent me because I am so good at telling lies. But I have told the truth.

We are the darkest acts made light.

Monsters, monsters, big and small, "They're gonna come and eat you all. Corsai, Corsai, tooth and claw, Shadow and bone will eat you raw. Malchai, Malchai, sharp and sly, Smile and bite and drink you dry. Sunai, Sunai, eyes like coal, Sing you a song and steal your soul. Monsters, monsters, big and small, They're gonna come and eat you all!

He could be the monster if it kept others human.

Most people come to New York to be discovered. The rest of us come here to hide.

Even if surviving wasn't simple, or easy, or fair. Even if he could never be human. He wanted the chance to matter. He wanted to live.

It was a rather extraordinary conversation if you think about it -- both of us speaking in code. But not military code, not Intelligence or Resistance code -- just feminine code.

I wasn’t heroic. I wasn’t simple. I was difficult. An emotionally challenging puzzle he wasn’t up for solving.

FLY THE PLANE, MADDIE.

Nobody gets to stay the same.

Do you ever wonder why music brings a soul to surface? What makes beauty work as well as pain?

Please come back soon. The window is always open.

Mourning was its own kind of music—the sound of so many hearts, of so many breaths, of so many standing together.

People were messy. They were defined not only by what they'd done, but by what they would have done, under different circumstances, molded as much by their regrets as their actions, choices they stood by and those they wished they could undo. Of course, there was no going back - time only moved forward - but people could change. For worse. And for better. It wasn't easy. The world was complicated. Life was hard. And so often, living hurt. So make it worth the pain.

What you read will taste so bad at times, you’ll want to spit it out, but you’ll swallow these words and they will become part of you, part of your gut, and you will hurt because of them.

Don't know how I kept going. You just do. You have to, so you do.

A writer should never have the audacity to write about themselves unless they’re willing to separate every layer of protection between the author’s soul and their book. The words should come directly from the center of the gut, tearing through flesh and bone as they break free. Ugly and honest and bloody and a little bit terrifying, but completely exposed.

It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, 'You stupid ass, just wait a minute,' and she’ll open her eyes! 'Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time!' But they always do.

I spent a long time playing that game,” she said. “Pretending there were other versions of this world, where other versions of me got to live, and be happy, even if I didn’t, and you know what? It’s lonely as hell. Maybe there are other versions, other lives, but this one’s ours. It’s all we’ve got.

There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will

The world was her manuscript. No surface was safe.

I needed for the imaginary version of my world to be darker than my real world. Otherwise, I would have wanted to leave them both.

Some families are lucky enough to never experience a single tragedy. But then there are those families that seem to have tragedies waiting on the back burner. What can go wrong, goes wrong. And then gets worse.

Every weakness is a place to slide a knife.

It’s what you do when you’ve experienced the worst of the worst. You seek out people like you…people worse off than you…and you use them to make yourself feel better about the terrible things that have happened to you.

I’m willing to walk in darkness if it keeps humans in the light.

Not with a bang, but with a whimper. In with gunfire and out with smoke.

We are a sensational team

And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie's written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I'm reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She's right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can't be landed, stuck in the climb—alive, alive, ALIVE.

Careless talk costs lives.

I'd rather be able to see the truth than live a lie.

I didn't stop fighting," he said, the words so low he worried Kate wouldn't hear them, but she did. "I just got tired of losing. It's easier this way." "Of course it's easier," said Kate. "that doesn't mean it's right.

the things lurking around inside the mind can be just as dangerous as tangible threats.

The greatest thing is to have someone who loves you and—and to love in return.

I stretch truths where I see fit. I’m a writer.

Everyone was made of sounds, and August had learned hers the first day they met.

My mother used to say that houses have a soul, and if that is true, the soul of Verity Crawford’s house is as dark as they come.

He just put his hand through the bulkhead, exactly as she'd done, and squeezed my shoulder. He has very strong fingers. And he kept his hand there the whole way home, even when he was reading the map and giving me headings. So I am not flying alone now after all.

It hurts,” he whispered. “What does?” asked Kate. “Being. Not being. Giving in. Holding out. No matter what I do, it hurts.” Kate tipped her head back against the tub. “That’s life, August,” she said. “You wanted to feel alive, right? It doesn’t matter if you’re monster or human. Living hurts.

I was difficult. An emotionally challenging puzzle he wasn’t up for solving. Which was fine. I wasn’t in the mood to be solved

Sing you a song and steal your soul.

The good thing about sins is they don’t have to be atoned for immediately,

I was good at spewing bullshit. It's why I became a writer.

It’s natural, to assume the worst in people, even if that assumption is only for a split second

Nothing like an arcane literary debate with your tyrannical master while you pass the time leading to your execution.

There was a strange place, between knowing and not knowing. A place where things could live in the back of your head without weighing down your heart.

How did you ever get here, Maddie Brodatt?" "'Second to the right, and then straight on till morning,'" she answered promptly-it did feel like Neverland. "Crikey, am I so obviously Peter Pan?" Maddie laughed. "The Lost Boys give it away." Jamie studied his hands. "Mother keeps the windows open in all our bedrooms while we're gone, like Mrs. Darling, just in case we come flying home when she's not expecting us.

Whatever he was made of — stardust or ash or life or death — would be gone. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. In with gunfire and out with smoke. And August wasn’t ready to die. Even if surviving wasn’t simple, or easy, or fair. Even if he could never be human. He wanted the chance to matter. He wanted to live.

Von Loewe really should know me well enough by now to realize that I am not going to face my execution without a fight. Or with anything remotely resembling dignity.

Don’t tell me you’re afraid of heights,” she said, shimmying along the edge. “Not heights,” he murmured. “Just falling.

August stared at her, aghast. "Did I know that kissing you would bring your soul to surface? That - THAT - would have the same effect as pain or music? No, I must have missed that lesson." She stared at him, agape. "August, was that sarcasm?

Why are there so many shadows in the world, Kate? Shouldn’t there be just as much light?

I don’t know who I am, and who I’m not, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be, and I miss who I was; I miss it every day, Kate, but there’s no place for that August anymore. No place for the version of me who wanted to go to school, and have a life, and feel human, because this world doesn’t need that August. It needs someone else.

Incredible what slender threads you begin to hang your hopes on.

We do it, Jackson, because compassion must be louder than pride.

The kiss was full of both desire and respect—two things a lot of men didn’t seem to know could go hand in hand.

People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realize. You see someone in school everyday, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette of a coffee with them, and you talk about the weather or last night's air raid. But you don't talk so much about what was the nastiest thing you ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were 13, or what you imagine yourself doing with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance.

It's a monster's world.

One should only walk away from an autobiography with, at best, an uncomfortable distaste for its author.

I live in a world where shadows have teeth. It's not a particularly relaxing environment.

I am a man, not a movement,” he said. “But if a movement is what it takes to end this war, then I will play my part.

Are you afraid of your own shadow?

An important verity about knowledge is that the brain works most effectively with consciously retained information. We more easily remember what we want to recall later. When we feed our fourteen billion brain cells with information that will enrich us and help others, we are really learning to Think Big.

Why would you even want to be human? We’re fragile. We die.” “You also live. You don’t spend every day wondering why you exist,but don’t feel real, why you look human, but can’t be. You don’t do everything you can to be a good person only to have it constantly thrown in your face that you’re not a person at all.

But the teacher had been right about one thing: violence breeds. Someone pulls a trigger, sets off a bomb, drives a bus full of tourists off a bridge, and what's left in the wake isn't just she'll casings, wreckage, bodies. There's something else. Something bad. An aftermath. A recoil. A reaction to all that anger and pain and death.

A part of me will always be unflyable, stuck in the climb.

It was a cycle of whimpers and bangs, gruesome beginnings and bloody ends.

I am Sunai,” he said. “I am holy fire. And if I have to burn the world to cleanse it, so help me, I will.

I'M SCOTTISH!

Oh Julie, wouldn’t I know if you were dead? Wouldn’t I feel it happening, like a jolt of electricity to my heart?

Kiss me, Hardy!’ Weren’t those Nelson’s last words at the Battle of Trafalgar? Don’t cry. We’re still alive and we make a sensational team.

There are no monsters in the dark.

Listen to me,” he said, pulling off his coat. “You need to stay awake.” She almost laughed, a shallow chuckle cut short by pain. He tore the lining from the Colton jacket. “What’s so funny?” “You’re a really shitty monster, August Flynn.

And I envied her that she had chosen her work herself and was doing what she wanted to do. I don't suppose I had any idea what I 'wanted' and so I was chosen, not choosing. There's glory and honor in being chosen. But not much room for free will.

I don't believe for a minute-that we wouldn't have become friends somehow-that an unexploded bomb wouldn't have gone off and blown us both into the same crater, or that God himself wouldn't have come along and knocked our heads together in a flash of green sunlight. But it wouldn't have been likely.

Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.

Didn't we talk about this?" "HAIL!" "That isn't an answer." I planted my hands on my hips. "Was there a reason for shoving the gummy bears off the counter? Did they tell you they were suicidal? On second thought," I raised a hand, palm out, "don't answer that. If the candy is talking, I don't want to know.

What's strange about the whole thing is that although it's riddled with nonsense, altogether it's true - Julie's told our story, mine and hers, our friendship, so truthfully. It is us. We even had the same dream at the same time. How could we have had the same dream at the same time? How can something so wonderful and mysterious be true? But it is. And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie's written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I'm reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She's right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can't be landed, stuck in the climb - alive, alive, ALIVE.

Take care of your physical being. Feed it what it needs, not what the conscience tells you it wants. Giving in to cravings of the mind that ultimately hurt the body is like a weak parent giving in to her child. “Oh, you had a bad day? Do you want an entire box of cookies? Okay, sweetie. Eat it. And drink this soda while you’re at it.” Caring for your body is no different from caring for a child. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it sucks, sometimes you just want to give in, but if you do, you’ll pay for the consequences eighteen years down the road.