Quotes from Love Letters to the Dead

“I think a lot of people want to be someone, but we are scared that if we try, we won't be as good as everyone imagines we could be.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“And maybe what growing up really means is knowing that you don't have to be just a character, going whichever way the story says. It's knowing you could be the author instead.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“What I told you about saving people isn't true. You might think it is, because you might want someone else to save you, or you might want to save someone so badly. But no one else can save you, not really. Not from yourself. [...] You fall asleep in the foothills, and the wolf comes down from the mountains. And you hope someone will wake you up. Or chase it off. Or shoot it dead. But when you realize that the wolf is inside you, that's when you know. You can't run from it. And no one who loves you can kill the wolf, because it's part of you. They see your face on it. And they won't fire the shot.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“You can be noble and brave and beautiful and still find yourself falling.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“When we are in love, we are both completely in danger and completely saved.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“You think you know someone, but that person always changes, and you keep changing, too. I understood it suddenly, how that’s what being alive means. Our own invisible plates shifting inside of our bodies, beginning to align into the people we are going to become.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“But we aren't transparent. If we want someone to know us, we have to tell them stuff.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“There's more to life than being a passenger.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“There are a lot of human experiences that challenge the limits of our language,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons that we have poetry.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“Truth is beautiful, no matter what the truth is. Even if it's scary or bad. It is beauty simply because it's true. And truth is bright. Truth makes you more you.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“Sometimes when we say things, we hear silence. Or only echoes. Like screaming from inside. And that’s really lonely. But that only happens when we weren’t really listening. It means we weren’t ready to listen yet. Because every time we speak, there is a voice. There is the world that answers back.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“I wish you could tell me where you are now. I mean, I know you’re dead, but I think there must be something in a human being that can’t just disappear. It’s dark out. You’re out there. Somewhere, somewhere. I’d like to let you in.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“Nirvana means freedom. Freedom from suffering. I guess some people would say that death is just that. So, congratulations on being free, I guess. The rest of us are still here, grappling with all that's been torn up.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“she walked like she belonged in a better world,”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“I mean, words can't be good enough for a lot of things. But, you know, I guess we have to try.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel, or not to feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at any moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to -- letting a person be what he really is.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“I know that it can be hard to believe that someone loves you if you are afraid of being yourself, or if you are not exactly sure who you are. It can be hard to believe that someone won't leave.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“So maybe when we can say things, when we can write the words, when we can express how it feels, we aren’t so helpless.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“I think that by beauty, you don't just mean something that's pretty. You mean something that makes us human.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“It's sad when everyone knows you, but no one knows you.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“We do things sometimes because we feel so much inside of us, and we don’t notice how it affects somebody else.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“The thing about traditions is that they hold up the shape of your memory.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“How could she just leave me here to live without her? I miss her so much. I love her. I want her to grow up and become who she was meant to be. I wanted her to grow up with me.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“You learned right away that applause sounds like love.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“I think it’s like when you lose something so close to you, it’s like losing yourself. That’s why at the end, it’s hard for her to write even. She can hardly remember how. Because she barely knows what she is anymore.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“I feel like I am drowning in memories. Everything is too bright.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“If beauty is truth, and truth is beauty, they are defined by each other, so how do we know the meaning of either?”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

“You know when you think you know someone? More than anyone in the world? You know you know them, because you've seen them, like, for real. And then you reach out, and suddenly they are just... gone. You though you belonged together. You thought they were yours, but they're not. You want to protect them, but you can't.”
― Ava Dellaira, quote from Love Letters to the Dead

About the author

Popular quotes

“He dragged me back - just in time. A tree had crashed down on to the side walk, just missing us. Poirot stared at it, pale and upset.
"It was a near thing that! But clumsy, all the same - for I had no suspicion - at least hardly any suspicion. Yes, but for my quick eyes, the eyes of a cat, Hercule Poirot might now be crushed out of existence - a terrible calamity for the world. And you, too, mon ami - though that would not be such a national catastrophe."
"Thank you," I said coldly.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Big Four

“The more south we were, the more deep a sky it seemed, till, in the Valley of Mexico, I thought it held back an element too strong for life, and that the flamy brilliance of blue stood off this menace and sometimes, like a sheath or silk membrane, shoed the weight it held in sags. So when later he would fly high over the old craters on the plain, coaly bubbles of the underworld, dangerous red everywhere from the sun, and then coats of snow on the peak of the cones—gliding like a Satan—well, it was here the old priests, before the Spaniards, waited for Aldebaran to come into the middle of heaven to tell them whether or not life would go on for another cycle, and when they received their astronomical sign built their new fire inside the split and emptied chest of a human sacrifice. And also, hereabouts, worshipers disguised as gods and as gods in the disguise of birds, jumped from platforms fixed on long poles, and glided as they spun by the ropes—feathered serpents, and eagles too, the voladores, or fliers. There still are such plummeters, in market places, as there seem to be remnants or conversions or equivalents of all the old things. Instead of racks or pyramids of skulls still in their hair and raining down scraps of flesh there are corpses of dogs, rats, horses, asses, by the roads; the bones dug out of the rented graves are thrown on a pile when the lease is up; and there are the coffins looking like such a rough joke on the female form, sold in the open shops, black, white, gray, and in all sizes, with their heavy death fringes daubed in Sapolio silver on the black. Beggars in dog voices on the church steps enact the last feebleness for you with ancient Church Spanish, and show their old flails of stump and their sores. The burden carriers with the long lines, hemp lines they wind over their foreheads to hold the loads on their backs, lie in the garbage at siesta and give themselves the same exhibited neglect the dead are shown. Which is all to emphasize how openly death is received everywhere, in the beauty of the place, and how it is acknowledged that anyone may be roughly handled—the proudest—pinched, slapped, and set down, thrown down; for death throws even worse in men’s faces and makes it horrible and absurd that one never touched should be roughly dumped under, dumped upon.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from The Adventures of Augie March

“The romantic reunion and thank-you-for-saving-my-life sex would have to wait until later.”
― Jennifer Estep, quote from Tangled Threads

“So Fermi said, “Well . . . there is the remote possibility that neutrons may be emitted in the fission of uranium and then of course perhaps a chain reaction can be made.” Rabi said, “What do you mean by ‘remote possibility’?” and Fermi said, “Well, ten per cent.” Rabi said, “Ten per cent is not a remote possibility if it means that we may die of it. If I have pneumonia and the doctor tells me that there is a remote possibility that I might die, and it’s ten percent, I get excited about it.”
― Richard Rhodes, quote from The Making of the Atomic Bomb

“Sometimes it’s better to hold onto what you have, rather than risk what might be.”
― H.M. Ward, quote from Demon Kissed

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.