Quotes from Marrow

Tarryn Fisher ·  296 pages

Rating: (9.8K votes)


“Sadness is an emotion you can trust. It is stronger than all of the other emotions. It makes happiness look fickle and untrustworthy. It pervades, lasts longer, and replaces the good feelings with such an eloquent ease you don’t even feel the shift until you are suddenly wrapped in its chains. How hard we strive for happiness, and once we finally have the elusive feeling in our grasp, we hold it briefly, like water as it trickles through our fingers.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“I believe in loneliness so deep and profound it has a physical presence”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“I have to stop fucking killing people.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“You have to be willing to be happy. Despite the mess of your life—just accept what’s happened, throw away your ideals, and create a new map of happiness to follow.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“The loss of innocence is the most severe of growing pains.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow



“Weak people let their pain choke them to a slow, emotional death. Strong people use that pain, Margo. They use it as fuel.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“I want to be fireproof. Nothing should have the power to break my heart.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“I've always been afraid that love isn't real. So I watched movies that assured me that there can be happy endings and shit.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“Life is all about allowing people choices to be who they want. But the majority of people choose to be worthless.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“We are all pretenders in life, finding a patch of humanity that we relate to, and then embrace it. We come straight down the birth canal and our parents start telling us who to be, simply by being themselves. We see their lives, their cars, the way they interact, the rules they set, and the foundations for our own lives are laid. And when our parents aren’t molding us, our situations are. We are all sheep, who get jobs, and have babies, and diet, and try to carve something special out for ourselves using the broken hearts, and bored minds, and scathed souls life delivered to us. And it’s all been done before, every bit of suffering, every joy.
And the minute you realize that we are all pretenders is the minute everything stops intimidating you: punishment, and failure, and death. Even people. There is nothing so ingenious about another human who has pretended well. They are, in fact, just another soul, perhaps more clever, better at failing than you are. But not worth a second of intimidation.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow



“Be bold about your right to be loved.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“Nothing is better than the discovery of another living, breathing human, who fights the same as you do, loves the same as you do, and understands you with such clarity that it feels erotic.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“The moon is wicked, jealous of the sun. People do bad things in the dark, under the hollow gaze of the moon. It’s smiling at me now, proud of my sin.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“Every bad thing that happens here reminds people of what they’re trying to forget”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“I can’t stay the way I am. I don’t remember what it’s like to be free. To be wide open without fear. I need something to break me. Just enough so that I have new pieces to work with—make them into something else. I don’t want to give anyone the right to treat me like a loser. I don’t want to be fat, I don’t want to live in the Bone, I don’t want to be without knowledge. I won’t be the girl who people laugh at. Not anymore. Good thing I memorized their license plate. Just in case.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow



“I told myself that I was the one pretending to fit in, but life has taught me that we are all pretenders. Every single one of us.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“What a hypocrite I am; I spend my whole life reading books that allude to happiness, when I refuse to experience it. Sadness is an emotion you can trust. It is stronger than all of the other emotions. It makes happiness look fickle and untrustworthy. It pervades, lasts longer, and replaces the good feelings with such an eloquent ease you don’t even feel the shift until you are suddenly wrapped in its chains. How hard we strive for happiness, and once we finally have the elusive feeling in our grasp, we hold it briefly, like water as it trickles through our fingers. I don’t want to hold water. I want to hold something heavy and solid. Something I can understand. I understand sadness, and so I trust it. We are meant to feel sadness, if only to protect us from the brief spiels of happiness. Darkness is all I’ll ever know; maybe the key is to make poetry out of it.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“Dreams are plans; they get your heart moving, and once your heart gets moving, your brain will follow”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“You are worth loving. They just don’t have any love to give. Forgive them, Margo.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“Depression is a deep, black wave—so powerful, building from a swell and rising … rising”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow



“Do we create our own heroes and then kill them with the truth?”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“My mother is beautiful in the same way that a storm is beautiful. She is wild and destructive, and in the middle of her fury you feel her God given right to destroy.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“But the truth of the matter—as I’ve come to understand it—is that people will ignore every warning sign when blinded by their thirst for something. It’s better to not be thirsty.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“We are all pretenders in life, finding a patch of humanity that we relate to, and then embrace it.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“Stop feeling useless and worthless. Stop drowning in regret. Stop listening to the persistent voice of your past failures. You were that child once, who Margo would have killed for. Fight for yourselves. You have a right to live, and to live well. You’ll inherit flaws; you’ll develop new ones. And that’s okay. Wear them, own them, use them to survive. Don’t kill others; don’t kill yourselves. Be bold about your right to be loved. And most importantly, don’t be ashamed of where you’ve come from, or the mistakes you’ve made. In blindness, love will exhume you.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow



“People—our dads, our moms, our friends—they are so broken they don’t even know that most of what they do reflects that brokenness. They just hurt whoever is in their wake. They don’t sit and think about what their hurt is doing to us. Pain makes humans selfish. Blocked off. Focused inward instead of outward”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“That’s because humans are built to live with pain. Weak people let their pain choke them to a slow, emotional death. Strong people use that pain, Margo. They use it as fuel.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“Darkness is all I’ll ever know; maybe the key is to make poetry out of it.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“Wanting someone to notice you all the while praying no one does.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow


“I've never been to the ocean, never heard the waves lick the sand in that quiet shushing you read about in books. I've never been to the zoo, smelled the elephant piss, and heard the cries of the monkeys. I've never had frozen yogurt from one of those places where you pull on the handle and fill your own cup with whatever you like. I've never eaten dinner at a restaurant with napkins that you set on your lap and silverware that isn't plastic. I've never painted my nails like the other girls at school, in bright neons and decadent reds. I've never been more than ten miles from home. Ten miles. It's like I live in the forever ago, not where buses rumble and trains have racks. I've never had a birthday cake, though I've wanted one very much. I've never owned a bra that is new, and had to cut the tags off with the scissors from the kitchen drawer. I've never been loved in a way that makes me feel as if I was supposed to be born, if only to feel loved. I've never, I've never, I've never. And it's my own fault. The things that we never do because someone makes us fearful of them, or makes us believe we don't deserve them. I want to do all my nevers-- alone or with someone who matters. I don't care. I just want to live.”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Marrow



About the author

Tarryn Fisher
Born place: in Johannesburg, South Africa
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“the success of Christianity was rooted in the Roman Empire, in its territorial extent, in the mobility that it promoted, in its towns and its cultural mix. From Pliny’s Bithynia to Perpetua’s Carthage, Christianity spread from its small-scale origins in Judaea largely because of the channels of communication across the Mediterranean world that the Roman Empire had opened up and because of the movement through those channels of people, goods, books and ideas. The irony is that the only religion that the Romans ever attempted to eradicate was the one whose success their empire made possible and which grew up entirely within the Roman world.”
― quote from SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome


“I nodded. It was pretty simple. Eight years now and we knew the routine. We do our job. Only here, our job had been castrated down to nothing but a security detail while they did the work that would get the glory. Hopefully they’d get it soon and ship us back to the U.S.”
― L.T. Ryan, quote from Noble Beginnings


“all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone? I”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Boxed Set


“Love is dangerous, if you know it's dangerous, that makes you treasure it, and you'll work harder to keep it.”
― Candace Bushnell, quote from Sex and the City


“Please just let me have you. Please. Nothing else matters if I can’t have you.”
― T.J. Klune, quote from Wolfsong


Interesting books

You Know You Love Me
(19.6K)
You Know You Love Me
by Cecily von Ziegesar
Havemercy
(2.5K)
Havemercy
by Jaida Jones
Zazie in the Metro
(5.2K)
Zazie in the Metro
by Raymond Queneau
The Favored Child
(10K)
The Favored Child
by Philippa Gregory
Nobody's Princess
(11.9K)
Nobody's Princess
by Esther M. Friesner
The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
(22.2K)
The Swerve: How the...
by Stephen Greenblatt

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.