Samantha > Samantha's Quotes

“So, imagine we’re all born with a set of feelings. Some are broader or deeper than others, but for everyone, there’s that ground floor, a bottom crust of the pie. That’s the maximum depth of feeling you’ve ever experienced. And then, the worst thing happens to you. The very worst thing that could have happened. The thing you had nightmares about as a child, and you thought, it’s all right because that thing will happen to me when I’m older and wiser, and I’ll have felt so many feelings by then that this one worst feeling, the worst possible feeling, won’t seem so terrible.

“But it happens to you when you’re young. It happens when your brain isn’t even fully done cooking—when you’ve barely experienced anything, really. The worst thing is one of the first big things that ever happens to you in your life. It happens to you, and it goes all the way down to the bottom of what you know how to feel, and it rips it open and carves out this chasm down below to make room. And because you were so young, and because it was one of the first big things to happen in your life, you’ll always carry it inside you. Every time something terrible happens to you from then on, it doesn’t just stop at the bottom —it goes all the way down.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Pride…it’s so often an excuse for people to be weak.”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, Foundryside

“Thinking about history makes me wonder how I’ll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“The phrase 'see attached bibliography' is the single sexiest thing you have ever written to me.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“You see it in all animals - the female of the species is more deadly than the male.'

'Except humans.”
― Mindy McGinnis, The Female of the Species

“And I think about all the things we could be
if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.”
― Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X

“For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“When I was in the water," Mephi said, "I didn't know where to go. I had to find someone to help me. I swam to you because I knew you would help me. I know who you are...You are the person who helps”
― Andrea Stewart, The Bone Shard Daughter

“One thing I'm sure Colborne will never understand is that I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“What is more important, that Caesar is assassinated or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends? … That,’ Frederick said, 'is where the tragedy is.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart—by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Which of us could say we were more sinned against than sinning? We were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Secrets carry weight, like lead.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Not wanting to be destroyed by despair doesn’t make you a coward. It makes you a survivor.”
― S.A. Chakraborty, The Empire of Gold

“Strange, isn’t it? To love a book. When the words on the pages become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are. It’s nice to finally have someone read stories I know so intimately.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“We are all stardust and stories.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea

“But the world is strange and endings are not truly endings no matter how the stars might wish it so.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Starless Sea