“I meant it when I said I didn’t believe in love at first sight. It takes time to really, truly fall for someone. Yet I believe in a moment. A moment when you glimpse the truth within someone, and they glimpse the truth within you. In that moment, you don’t belong to yourself any longer, not completely. Part of you belongs to him; part of him belongs to you. After that, you can’t take it back, no matter how much you want to, no matter how hard you try.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Every form of art is another way of seeing the world. Another perspective, another window. And science –that’s the most spectacular window of all. You can see the entire universe from there.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“I would love you in any shape, in any world, with any past. Never doubt that.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Now I know that grief is a whetstone that sharpens all your love, all your happiest memories, into blades that tear you apart from within.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“I fell in love with his unchanging soul.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Paul says, "If not for yourself, my lady, stay alive for me."
Our eyes meet.
His next words are a whisper. "I have no need for a world without you in it.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Now I know grief is a whetstone that sharpens all your love, all your happiest memories, into blades that tear you apart from within. Something has been torn out from inside me that will never be filled up, not ever, no matter how long I live. They say "time heals," but even now, less than a week after my father's death, I know that's a lie. What people really mean is that eventually you'll get used to the pain. You'll forget who you were without it; you'll forget what you looked like without your scars.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“We can't begin to learn until we admit how much we don't know.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“It's comfort enough to know that there are infinite worlds. Infinite possibilities. Now I know somewhere,somehow, Sophia and I had our chance”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“This, I think, is the boundary line of adulthood. Not the crap they claim it is- graduating from high school or losing your virginity or getting your first apartment or whatever. You cross the boundary the first time you're changed forever. You cross it the first time you know you can never go back.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“I would love you in any shape, in any world, with any past.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“They say “time heals,” but even now, I know that’s a lie. What people really mean is that eventually you’ll get used to the pain. You’ll forget who you were without it; you’ll forget what you looked like without your scars.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“I see... the way you're always searching. How much you hate anything fake or phony. How you're older than your years, but still... playful, like a little girl. How you're always looking into people, or wondering what they see when they look back at you. Your eyes. It's all in the eyes.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“I have no need for a world without you in it.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“I can hardly bear to look at him; it's like staring into the brightness and warmth of the sun, knowing that it's burning you while understanding that it makes your whole life possible.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“The most powerful presence in the room is his absence.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“The memory stings -- and I hate that, I hate how all the good memories have turned into things that hurt -- but I need the pain.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Apparently, when people travel between dimensions, their physical forms are "no longer observable," which is a quantum mechanics thing, and explaining it involves this whole story about a cat that's in a box and is simultaneously alive and dead until you open the box, and it gets seriously complicated. Never ask a physicist about that cat.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“I realize that this is what being a parent means—facing the most horrible thing that could ever happen to you and yet thinking only of how it will hurt your child.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Every form of art is another way of seeing the world. Another perspective, another window.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“There are patterns within the dimensions,” Paul insisted, never looking up again. “Mathematical parallels. It’s plausible to hypothesize that these patterns will be reflected in events and people in each dimension. That people who have met in one quantum reality will be likely to meet in another. Certain things that happen will happen over and over, in different ways, but more often than you could explain by chance alone.”
“In other words,” I said, “you’re trying to prove the existence of fate.”
I was joking, but Paul nodded slowly, like I’d said something intelligent. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Mathematical parallels. It's plausible to hypothesize that these patterns will be reflected in events and people in each dimension. That people who have met in one quantum reality will be likely to meet in another. Certain things that happen will happen over and over, in different ways, but more often than you could explain by chance alone.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Bath," I said, relishing the short A of my new accent. "Baaaath. Privacy. Aluminum. Laboratory. Tomato. Schhhhhedule."
The giggles come over me, and I stop right there, hand against my chest, trying to catch my breath. I know I'm laughing mostly because I refuse to give in and start crying. The grief for my father has nowhere to go and is twisting every other mood I have into knots. And... tomahhhhto. That's hilarious.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“You are not my Marguerite. And yet—you are. This essential thing you share—your soul—that is what I love.” Paul’s smile is sadder and more beautiful than I have ever seen before. “I would love you in any shape, in any world, with any past. Never doubt that.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“All I need here is you”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“The universe is in fact a multiverse.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“If your mother had any idea we were talking about this, she'd skin me alive. I'm not being metaphorical about that. I think she could actually, literally skin me. She gets these wild eyes sometimes. There's Cossack blood in her; I'd bet anything.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Is he right, about my creating excitement where I can? Even being melodramatic?
You went on a half-baked vengeance quest against Paul using a totally untested experimental device, I think. He might possibly have a point.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“Paul,” I murmur, “call me by my name.”
“You know I cannot.”
“Just once. Just once I want to hear you say my name.”
Paul brings his face close to mine, so close we are nearly touching. “Marguerite.”
And we are lost.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“I told myself it didn’t matter if I never got to be with you. It was enough just to love you.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from A Thousand Pieces of You
“for unfortunately the person most dogged in the belief in a false reputation is always that one, the possessor, who has the best means of knowing that it is not true.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from A Pair of Blue Eyes
“What has since happened in Tibet is hardly to be believed. More than 1.2 million Tibetans lost their lives and of about six thousand monasteries, temples, and shrines, 99 percent were either looted or totally destroyed. In”
― Heinrich Harrer, quote from Seven Years in Tibet (Paladin Books)
“Las referencias feroces, aunque vagas, que escuchaba en boca de los cadetes, estimulaban su imaginación. En sueños, el nombre se presentaba dotado de atributos carnales, extraños y contradictorios, la mujer era siempre la misma y distinta, una presencia que se desvanecía cuando iba a tocarla o lo sumía en una ternura infinita y entonces creía morir de impaciencia.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The Time of the Hero
“Of the things I had not known when I started out, I think the most important was the degree to which the legacy of the McCarthy period still lived. It had been almost seven years since Joe McCarthy had been censured when John Kennedy took office, and most people believed that his hold on Washington was over. ... among the top Democrats, against whom the issue of being soft on Communism might be used, and among the Republicans, who might well use the charge, it was still live ammunition. ...
McCarthyism still lingered ... The real McCarthyism went deeper in the American grain than most people wanted to admit ... The Republicans’ long, arid period out of office [twenty years, ended by the Eisenhower administration], accentuated by Truman’s 1948 defeat of Dewey, had permitted the out-party in its desperation, to accuse the leaders of the governing party of treason. The Democrats, in the wake of the relentless sustained attacks on Truman and Acheson over their policies in Asia, came to believe that they had lost the White House when they lost China. Long after McCarthy himself was gone, the fear of being accused of being soft on Communism lingered among the Democratic leaders. The Republicans had, of course, offered no alternative policy on China (the last thing they had wanted to do was suggest sending American boys to fight for China) and indeed there was no policy to offer, for China was never ours, events there were well outside our control, and our feudal proxies had been swept away by the forces of history. But in the political darkness of the time it had been easy to blame the Democrats for the ebb and flow of history.
The fear generated in those days lasted a long time, and Vietnam was to be something of an instant replay after China. The memory of the fall of China and what it did to the Democrats, was, I think, more bitter for Lyndon Johnson than it was for John Kennedy. Johnson, taking over after Kennedy was murdered and after the Kennedy patched-up advisory commitment had failed, vowed that he was not going to be the President of the United States who lost the Great Society because he lost Saigon. In the end it would take the tragedy of the Vietnam War and the election of Richard Nixon (the only political figure who could probably go to China without being Red-baited by Richard Nixon) to exorcise those demons, and to open the door to China.”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Best and the Brightest
“Don't let anyone but a soldier tell you how to fight a war.”
― Nick Cole, quote from The Old Man and the Wasteland
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