“Just remember, Callum when you’re floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“That just the way it is. Some things will never change. That's just the way it is. But don't you believe them.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“I used to comfort myself with the belief that it was only certain individuals and their peculiar notions that spoilt things for the rest of us. But how many individuals does it take before it's not the individuals who are prejudiced but society itself?”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“The news lies all the time. They tell us what they think we would want to hear.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“I pulled him closer to me, wrapping my arms around him, kissing him just as desperately as he was kissing me. Like if we could just love long enough and hard enough and deep enough, then the world outside would never, could never hurt us.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“I hadn't fully realized just how powerful words could be before this. Whoever came up with the saying 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was talking out of his or her armpit.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“She stays lost in the middle of her own world somewhere. We can’t get in and she doesn’t come out. Not often anyway, and certainly not for any length of time. But her mind takes her to somewhere kind, I think, to judge by the peaceful, serene look on her face most of the time. ”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“Dear God, please let him have heard me. Please.
Please.
If you're up there.
Somewhere.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“You're a Nought and I'm a Cross and there's nowhere for us to be, nowhere for us to go where we'd be left in peace...That's why I started crying. That's why I couldn't stop. For all the things we might've had and all the things we're never going to have.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“People are people. We'll always find a way to mess up, doesn't matter who's in charge.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“So why did you want to kiss me?"
"We're friends aren't we?" Callum shrugged.
I relaxed into a smile. "Of course we are."
"And if you can't kiss your friends who can you kiss?" Callum smiled.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“And things go unsaid soon get forgotten”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“Love was like an avalanche, with Sephy and I hand-in-hand racing like hell to get out of it's way-only, instead of running away from it, we kept running straight towards it.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“He pulls the hood over my head. I try to pull back. I'm not trying to run away. I just want to see her... One last time...”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“D'you ever wonder what it would be like if our positions were reversed?' I ask. At Jack's puzzled look I continue. 'If we whites were in charge instead of you Crosses?'
'Can't say it's ever crossed my mind,' Jack shrugs.
'I used to think about it a lot,' I sigh. 'Dreams of living in a world with no more discrimination, no more prejudice, a fair police force, an equal justice system, equality of education, equality of life, a level playing field...”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“But the Good Book said a lot of things. Like 'love thy neighbor' and ' do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. If nothing else, wasn't the message of the Good Book to live and let live? So how could the Crosses call themselves 'God's chosen' and still treat us the way they did?”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“Why was it that when noughts committed criminal acts, the fact that they were noughts was always pointed out? The banker was a Cross. The newsreader didn't even mention it.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“Lynny's solution was better. Just fade out, until you were ready to fade back in.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“Who did it, Sephy?' She repeated. 'Who beat you up? 'Cause whoever it was, I'll kill them.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“Was that all love did for you? Made you give up and give in? Left you open to pain and hurt?”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“I lay on her bed with my arms wrapped around her, wondering how on earth we'd managed to end up like this. I'm not sure what'd been on my mind when I came to see her, but this wasn't it! Strange the way things turn out. When I'd come into her room I'd been burning up with desire to smash her and everything around her. And yet here she was, asleep and still holding on to my arms like I was a life-raft or something. There's not a single millimetre between her body and mine. I could move my hands and, and, anything I liked. Caress or strangle. Kill or cure. Her or me. Me or her.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“What was it about the differences in others that scared some people so much?”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“Noughts... Even the word was negative. Nothing. Nil. Zero. Nonentities. It wasn't a name we'd chosen for ourselves. It was a name we'd been given.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“He wrapped his arms around me. We were cuddled up like a couple of spoons in a cutlery drawer.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“No-one understood. No-one. Least of all - me.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“It was because I was scared. Scared of standing out, scared of being invisible. Scared of seeming too big, scared of being too small.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“We were comfort kissing, that's all. We wrapped our arms around each other for solace. Bear hugging. Squeezing the life out of each other as if we were trying to merge together. When at last we loosened our grip, in a strange way we were both more calm. Physically, at least. Not mentally.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“Mrs Bawden yanked me away from the table and dragged me across the food hall. I tried to twist away from her, but she had a grip like a python on steroids.”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“A yawning hole deep inside me was begging to be filled up with words and thoughts and ideas and facts and fictions.”
Callum McGregor”
― Malorie Blackman, quote from Noughts & Crosses
“cuando se produce un conflicto entre la tecnología moderna y los deseos de nuestros primitivos antepasados, los deseos primitivos siempre ganan. Este es el Principio del Hombre de las Cavernas.”
― Michio Kaku, quote from Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
“I think every creature near enough to hear that just pooped" Oberon said, "And then it went into hiding. Hunting tip number one:Stay Silent.”
― Kevin Hearne, quote from Trapped
“Being gifted doesn't mean you've been given something. It means, you have something to give.”
― pleasefindthis, quote from I Wrote This For You: Just the Words
“Not even the most powerful Natural in a millennium had seen him coming.”
― Kami Garcia, quote from Dangerous Creatures
“In the Land under the Hill, in the Time Before …
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful lady of the Seelie Court who lost her heart to the son of an angel.
Once upon a time, there were two boys come to the land of Faerie, brothers noble and bold. One brother caught a glimpse of the fair lady and, thunderstruck by her beauty, pledged himself to her. Pledged himself to stay. This was the boy Andrew. His brother, the boy Arthur, would not leave his side.
And so the boys stayed beneath the hill, and Andrew loved the lady, and Arthur despised her.
And so the lady kept her boy close to her side, kept this beautiful creature who swore his fealty to her, and when her sister lay claim to the other, the lady let him be taken away, for he was nothing.
She gave Andrew a silver chain to wear around his neck, a token of her love, and she taught him the ways of the Fair Folk. She danced with him in revels beneath starry skies. She fed him moonshine and showed him how to give way to the wild.
Some nights they heard Arthur’s screams, and she told him it was an animal in pain, and pain was in an animal’s nature.
She did not lie, for she could not lie.
Humans are animals.
Pain is their nature.
For seven years they lived in joy. She owned his heart, and he hers, and somewhere, beyond, Arthur screamed and screamed. Andrew didn’t know; the lady didn’t care; and so they were happy.
Until the day one brother discovered the truth of the other.
The lady thought her lover would go mad with the grief of it and the guilt. And so, because she loved the boy, she wove him a story of deceitful truths, the story he would want to believe. That he had been ensorcelled to love her; that he had never betrayed his brother; that he was only a slave; that these seven years of love had been a lie.
The lady set the useless brother free and allowed him to believe he had freed himself.
The lady subjected herself to the useless brother’s attack and allowed him to believe he had killed her.
The lady let her lover renounce her and run away.
And the lady beheld the secret fruits of their union and kissed them and tried to love them. But they were only a piece of her boy. She wanted all of him or none of him.
As she had given him his story, she gave him his children.
She had nothing left to live for, then, and so lived no longer.
This is the story she left behind, the story her lover will never know; this is the story her daughter will never know.
This is how a faerie loves: with her whole body and soul.
This is how a faerie loves: with destruction.
I love you, she told him, night after night, for seven years. Faeries cannot lie, and he knew that.
I love you, he told her, night after night, for seven years. Humans can lie, and so she let him believe he lied to her, and she let his brother and his children believe it, and she died hoping they would believe it forever.
This is how a faerie loves: with a gift.”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from Pale Kings and Princes
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