“Why can't you like me?" he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. "Why can't you like me just a little?"
She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance.
Instead, he kissed her.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“It was that stages-of-anger thing. I was shocked and then I got pissed and then I fought like hell … and then I went numb. They called it acceptance, but it wasn’t. It’s what happens when you have only two choices: live with the monster, or kill yourself.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“But sticking to rules just because they're there does not make them right. You need to learn when the rules should be broken.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Obeying orders just to obey is the mark of a person who has ceased to think. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Sometimes you don't know what you need until it's gone”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Run, she told herself. Run, you idiot, run.
But she didn't. She couldn't. She just... couldn't.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Those brain-zapped kids weren’t the only - or maybe even the worst - enemy.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“As the dog sprinted back, Jack said to the girl, "Sweetheart,honey, why do you have to be so hateful?"
"Why not?" Ellie said. "It's not like being good ever got me anywhere.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“As a doc, though, I've seen what happens when people are under a lot of stress. Doesn't always bring out their best. When people are scared, they get angry. They'll do things they never thought they would. They'll bargain and compromise in order to survive; they'll chase after miracle cures and believe just about anything so long as it gives them hope. When hope fails, then watch out. Some people get brutal. They'll turn on each other; they'll become their own worst enemies.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Raccoon." She saw Ellie put a hand to her mouth to cover the giggles and then looked back at Tom. "Like, you caught it?"
"Well, it sure didn't get Fed-Exed [...]”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Sometimes when you're sad, it's easier to be angry.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Obeying orders just to obey is the mark of a person who has ceased to think.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“You want to brawl. You want to fight. Fighting tricks you into believing you can change the past, even when the past is dead and gone and all of it ashes.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“A chronic headache muttered in her temples, but like Barrett said, no one ever died from pain. True, but some days you didn't much enjoy living either.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“How come adults got away with saying things that would sound rude coming out of her mouth?”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“Fighting tricks you into believing you can change the past, even when the past is dead and gone and all of it ashes.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
“As long as you're alive, there is hope...Hope is saying that I will live one more day, and that is a blessing, too.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Ashes
Ilsa J. Bick
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“I'm looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love.”
― Candace Bushnell, quote from Summer and the City
“Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved.”
― Charlie Kaufman, quote from Synecdoche, New York: The Shooting Script
“If all men are good, there can be no Auschwitz.”
― Miklós Nyiszli, quote from Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account
“It was the most ludicrous sound I had ever heard. The strangled gargling sounded like a goat that was having an unpleasant sexual encounter.”
― Peter Allison, quote from Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales Of A Botswana Safari Guide
“Think of me,' she said because it seemed like something a girl in a fairy tale might say. Think of me. Remember me. Love me. Turn me into a story you tell again and again. The sister who was good as gold and became a queen.”
― Jennifer McMahon, quote from Don't Breathe a Word
Beautiful Ruins
Sometimes It Lasts
Afterworlds
First Debt
Raze
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