Quotes from The Shadow Society

Marie Rutkoski ·  416 pages

Rating: (3.9K votes)


“There can be second chances. But maybe it's also true that things can never be the same, and that you have to decide whether the second chance lives up to the first.”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society


“When you're a stranger to people you care about, you become a stranger to yourself.”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society


“Isn't that... isn't that what friends do? They change our perspective on the world. Part of why we care about them is because we love that feeling. The feeling of being changed.”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society


“The truth can sometimes sound like a lie because we're too afraid to believe it.”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society


“Truth was like an exploding star: violent, glitteringly beautiful. Now that I had seen it, felt it, it was impossible to settle for anything less.”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society



“How can you interpret the behavior of others when you're a mystery to yourself?”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society


“A snowfall softens all the hard noises and hard corners. It's a natural liar. I saw the sky sprinkle down a hundred, a thousand little white lies, and decided I didn't owe Orion anything.”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society


“For a while there was no other sound than the liquid whisper of my brush across paper, and as I painted,I thought about how the truth can sometimes sound like a lie because we're too afraid to believe it.”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society


“I got kicked out of my first home for poking a wire hanger into an electrical outlet. My foster mom caught me, shrieked, and called the DCFS to come cart me away, because I was clearly suicidal and no one had told her that I was a child with ‘special needs.’”
“Were you? Suicidal?”
“I was five.”
“Still.”
“No, I wasn’t trying to off myself. I was curious. Little kids spend half their waking hours being warned not to do things. Don’t run with scissors. Don’t lick a flagpole in winter. Don’t stick anything into electrical outlets. Those three little holes looked so mysterious. I had to know if they were as dangerous as everyone said.”
“What happened?” A smile curled the corner of Conn’s mouth, indicating he’d already guessed the answer—which wasn’t exactly hard, given that I was standing right there in front of him, and not buried in an early grave with the tombstone Here Lies Darcy Jones, electrocuted orphan.
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society


“I felt the back of my neck prickle. I was being watched. I knew this even before I slowly turned around, knew it like I knew I had ten fingers and ten toes.”
― Marie Rutkoski, quote from The Shadow Society



About the author

Marie Rutkoski
Born place: in Hinsdale, Illinois, The United States
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“ان أي شئ تريد ان تحققة يعتبر حقيقة موجودة قائمة و حاضرة فى الروح حرر عقلك من الافكار الخاصة بالشروط و القيود او احتمال عدم القدرة على تجلي و اظهار رغباتك . ان بقيت الرغبات و الافكار قائمة في عقلك بدون ان يزعجها شئ وكذلك في النية في نفس الوقت فسوف تتحول هذه الافكار و الرغبات الى واقع في العالم المادي”
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“Ultimately no one can hear in things―books included―more than he already knows. If you have no access to something from experience, you will have no ear for it.”
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“For as we would wish that a painter who is to draw a beautiful face, in which there is yet some imperfection, should neither wholly leave out, nor yet too pointedly express what is defective, because this would deform it, and that spoil the resemblance; so since it is hard, or indeed perhaps impossible, to show the life of a man wholly free from blemish, in all that is excellent we must follow truth exactly, and give it fully; any lapses or faults that occur, through human passions or political necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of some particular virtue, than as the natural effects of vice; and may be content without introducing them, curiously and officiously, into our narrative, if it be but out of tenderness to the weakness of nature, which has never succeeded in producing any human character so perfect in virtue as to be pure from all admixture and open to no criticism.”
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