“...our souls may be consumed by shadows, but that doesn't mean we have to behave as monsters.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows
“There's never going to be someone else," he says, shaking his head. "You've wrecked me. I wouldn't be any good to anybody now—except for you.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows
“Let the whole world knock. I'm not opening that door.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows
“A Seer dreams of all kinds of endings, but never a happy one for herself.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows
“And here I am, bravely risking the fallout of wounding your fragile, pudding-like soul—because real, forever friends don’t let each other wear ugly hats. I’ve wanted to say it for a month now, and I can bear it no longer. I know my witch is showing, but please take that thing off your head.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows
“I think the purest of souls, those with the most fragile of hearts, must be meant for a short life. They can't be tethered or held in your palm. Just like a sparrow, they light on your porch. Their song might be brief, but how greedy would we be to ask for more? No, you cannot keep a sparrow. You can only hope that as they fly away, they take a little bit of you with them.”
― Emm Cole, quote from The Short Life of Sparrows
“I lay still for a while, picking up the scattered garments of my mind and trying to assemble some kind of reasonable outfit from them.”
― Richard K. Morgan, quote from Altered Carbon
“if they brought you here,They'll put you to work. THEY'RE not readyto kill you YET.”
― Art Spiegelman, quote from Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began
“It’s the favorite part of my day.”
My eyes opened lazily. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
“When you undo them and run your hands throughout the waves. That’s my favorite part of the day.”
― Fisher Amelie, quote from Vain
“I have no illusions where Maven is concerned. I know his twisted heart, and that it feels something for me. Something he wants to get rid of, but can never part with.”
― Victoria Aveyard, quote from King's Cage
“DADDY
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time―
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
When it pours bean green over blue
In the waters of beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You―
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
And less the black man who
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two―
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never like you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Ariel
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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