Book Quotes

I fled out of the deep night - the deep night of the protected child-life , and tugged into the bright Day - the bright day of being-grownup

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. 'Grownups are the real monsters', he thought.

What can be done when you’re eleven can often never be done again.

Maybe there aren't any such things as good friends or bad friends - maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you're hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they're always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for too, if that's what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.

You can't be careful on a skateboard.

Calling it a simple schoolgirl crush was like saying a Rolls-Royce was a vehicle with four wheels, something like a hay-wagon. She did not giggle wildly and blush when she saw him, nor did she chalk his name on trees or write it on the walls of the Kissing Bridge. She simply lived with his face in her heart all the time, a kind of sweet, hurtful ache. She would have died for him.

Most women will shrug off what a man would kill you for, and kill you for what a man would shrug off.

Take care of what can be done now, before worrying too long over what might never be.

A man who trusts everyone is a fool and a man who trusts no one is a fool. We are all fools if we live long enough.

I will hate the man you choose because he isn't me, and love him if he makes you smile.

In wars, boy, fools kill other fools for foolish causes.

The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.

It was easier to be brave when someone needed your protection.

You have made a place in my heart where I thought there was no room for anything else. You have made flowers grow where I cultivated dust and stones. Remember this, on this journey you insist on making. If you die, I will not survive you long.

Better to have one woman on your side than ten men.

Run when you have to, fight when you must, rest when you can.

He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.

Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.

Not just beautiful, though - the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.

Taking crazy things seriously is a serious waste of time.

'Me?', said Hermione, 'Books and cleverness. There are more important things: friendship and bravery.'

Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.

Brave doesn't mean you're not scared. It means you go on even though you're scared.

What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?

You can destroy wood and brick, but you can't destroy a movement.

At an early age I learned that people make mistakes, and you have to decide if their mistakes are bigger than your love for them.

Intentions always look better on paper than in reality.

Funny. Slave masters thought they were making a difference in black people’s lives too. Saving them from their 'wild African ways.' Same shit, different century. I wish people like them would stop thinking that people like me need saving.

Your voices matter, your dreams matter, your lives matter. Be roses that grow in the concrete.

People say misery loves company, but I think it’s like that with anger too.

Good-byes hurt the most when the other person's already gone.

Funny how it works with white kids though. It’s dope to be black until it’s hard to be black.

Don’t let them put words in your mouth. God gave you a brain. You don’t need theirs.

Funerals aren’t for dead people. They’re for the living.

No matter what we say or how loud we shout, they will never hear us.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.

We don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.

It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.

There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.

When you feel homesick, just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go.

Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you.

I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.

Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.

Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it’s going to kill us.

That life - whatever else it is - is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open. And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.

There is no dishonor in losing the race. There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.

To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live.

Telling scary stories is something people have done for thousands of years, for most of us like being scared in that way. Since there isn't any danger, we think it is fun.