“In the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why's, you can love those parts too, and it's a love at once more complicated and more complete.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Love changes what is probable and makes unlikely things possible.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“I love.
The most reckless thing of all.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“I climb into the dark for you
Are you waiting in the stars for me?”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Forgetting lets you live without the pain for a moment but remembering hits hard.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Love has different shades. Like the way I loved Cassia when I thought she'd never love me. The way I loved her on the Hill. The way I love her now that she came into the canyon for me. It's different. Deeper. I thought I loved her and wanted her before, but as we walk through the canyon together I realize this could be more than a new shade. A whole new color.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“It's not knowing how to write that makes you interesting, it's what you write.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Everyone has something of beauty about them.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“This is a cruel thing to do because when someone knows your story they know you. And they can hurt you. It's why I give mine away in pieces, even to Cassia.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“We can either try to change everything or just make the most of whatever time we have.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“For a moment nothing happens. The figure stands still and I stand cold and alive and-
He starts to run. I make my way down the rocks, slipping, sliding, trying to get to the plain. I wish, I think, my feet clumsy, moving too fast, not fast enough, I wish i could run, I wish I'd written a whole poem, I wish I kept the compass-
And then I reach the plain and wish for nothing but what I have. Ky. Running toward me. I have never seen him run like this, fast, free, strong, wild. He looks so beautiful, his body moves so right. He stops just close enough for me to see the blue of his eyes and forget the red on my hands and the green I wish I wore. "You're here," he says, breathing hard and hungry. sweat and dirt cover his face, and he looks at me as though I'm the only thing he ever needed to see. I open my mouth to say yes. But I only have time to breathe in before he closes the last of the distance. All I know is the kiss.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Cassia and I sit as near to each other as we can. She leans into me and I keep my arms around her. I don't fool myself that I hold her together- she does that on her own- but holding her keeps me from flying apart.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“I didn't know all that was inside of him, either. I thought I did, but people run deep and complicated like rivers, hold their shape and are carved upon like stone.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“I run for her.
I run for them.
For me.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Because in the end you can't always choose what to keep. You can only choose how you let it go.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Death,” I say. “ It’s the one thing they haven’t fully conquered. They want to know more about it.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“I never named anything I've written before
no reason to
since
it would all have the same title anyway
-for you-
but I would call this one
one night
that night
when we let the world be only you
and only me
we stood on it while it spun
green and blue and red
the music ended
but we
were still
singing”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“I decided that it was the thoughts in your own mind that mattered more than anything else.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“I marked a map for every death
For every ache and blow
My world was all a page of black
With nothing left but snow.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Maybe only parts of our stories can keep us safe. The whole can feel like too much to bear.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“I have a sense that we have not yet arrived, that we are still reaching. For each other. For who we are meant to be.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Two little dark figures, looking up. Are they looking at me? Is is him? This far away there's only one way to know. I point to the sky.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“One night," Ky says, "doesn't seem like much to ask."
I don't speak. He moves closer and I feel his cheek against mine and breathe in the scent of sage and pine, of old dust and fresh water and of him.
"For one night, can we just think of each other? Not the Society or the Rising or even our families?"
"No," I say.
"No what?" He tangles one of his hands in my hair, the other draws me closer still.
"No, I don't think we can," I say. "And no, it isn't too much to ask.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“Time, Vick said, "is what we don't have.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“She cried before she slept. I reached out to touch the ends of her hair. She didn't notice. I didn't know what to do. Listening to her made me ache. I felt tears stream down my face too. And when I accidentally brushed Eli with my arm his face was wet where his tears ran down. We have all been carved out by our sorrow. Cut deep like canyon walls.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
“I'm just a butterfly, a mourning cloak, sealed inside a cocoon with blnd eyes and stiky wings. And suddenly I wonder if the cocoons sometimes do not open, if the butterfly inside is ever simply not strong enough to break through.”
― Ally Condie, quote from Crossed
Ally Condie
Born place: The United States
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“Calf-deep in the soothing water I indulge myself in the wishful vision. I am not unaware of what such daydreams signify, dreams of becoming an unthinking savage, of taking the cold road back to the capital, of groping my way out to the ruins in the desert, of returning to the confinement of my cell, of seeking out the barbarians and offering myself to them to use as they wish. Without exception they are dreams of ends: dreams not of how to live but of how to die. And everyone, I know, in that walled town sinking now into darkness (I hear the two thin trumpet calls that announce the closing of the gates) is similarly preoccupied. What has made it impossible for us to live in time like fish in the water, like birds in air, like children? It is the fault of Empire! Empire has created the time of history. Empire has located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation. A mad vision yet a virulent one: I, wading in the ooze, am no less infected with it than the faithful Colonel Joll as he tracks the enemies of Empire through the boundless desert, sword unsheathed to cut down barbarian after barbarian until at last he finds and slays the one whose destiny it should be (or if not his then his son's or unborn grandson's) to climb the bronze gateway to the Summer Palace and topple the globe surmounted by the tiger rampant that symbolizes eternal domination, while his comrades below cheer and fire their muskets in the air.”
― J.M. Coetzee, quote from Waiting for the Barbarians
“İnsan ömrü kısaydı, bir kurtçuğunkinden farksız. Ya da ipekböceğininkinden. Ademoğulları, Havvakızları tuhaf mahluklardı. Kurtçuğa benzetsen alınır, ipekböceğine benzetilmekten keyif duyarlardı. Böceklerden iğrenir ama parmaklarına uğurböceği konsa hayra alamet sayarlardı. Sıçanlardan tiksinir, sincaplara bayılırlardı. Akbabaları itici, kartalları heybetli bulurlardı. Sinekleri hor görür, ateşböceklerine bayılırlardı. Bakır ve demire ehemmiyet vermez, altına taparlardı. Ayaklarının altındaki taşlara dönüp bakmazken mücevherler için delirirlerdi.”
― Elif Shafak, quote from Honor
“Visto desde el espacio exterior, Tokio debe parecer una gran burbuja brillante en la que no hay lugar de donde esconderse de esa luz que parece atravesar todas las barreras; el cristal más ahumado y la más gruesa de las membranas, colándose hasta la última esquina de todas las habitaciones, al último escondrijo y la última grieta, a todos los nidos de los pájaros y a toda las colmenas. No había donde correr, ningún sitio en el que no pudieran encontrarte junto a tu sombra”
― Ryū Murakami, quote from Coin Locker Babies
“Is it not better for a man never to have been born?"
"Certaintly not" The response was brisk. "Just to be able to study the sky is reason enough to be alive."
"Unfortunately, I can't see the sky."
"Then listen to music.”
― Gore Vidal, quote from Creation
“the scripture says "oppression makes it even a wise man mad"...”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, quote from Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
The Testament
Anna Dressed in Bloo...
The Winner's Curse
The Thief
Postmortem
Through the Ever Nig...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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