Fuyumi Ono · 656 pages
Rating: (793 votes)
                                    “It doesn't take any effort to dream. It's a lot easier than looking at the problems in front of you and figuring out what you're going to do about them. But all you're doing is putting your problems up on a shelf for later, right? That doesn't make them go away.”
                                    
                                    
                                    ― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn
                                
                                
                                    “And that's when I realized that there's really two ways people cry. You cry when you're sorry for yourself, and then you cry when you are really sad. The tears you cry for yourself? Those are kid tears. You're crying because you want somebody to help you or pick you up. Your mom, your dad, the old lady next door... anyone.”
                                    
                                    
                                    ― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn
                                
                                
                                    “When people felt pain time and time again, they came to fear that pain above all other things. So they tried to ignore it, to forget it was happening, as a way of bearing it. And pretty soon, they would come to feel like they'd accomplished something just by doing that -- even though nothing had changed.”
                                    
                                    
                                    ― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn
                                
                                
                                    “I think that once you're born, the thing you have to do is find out who you are and live that life as well as you can. You can't spend your time wondering how things would have been if you were someone different.”
                                    
                                    
                                    ― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn
                                
                                
                                    “A throne is always paid for in blood.
The king of En had told her that once. Even should a king's ascension be bloodless as a gift from Heaven, to hold onto one's throne invariably meant that blood must flow -- as it had at the beginning, in the fight against the false king's armies, and the quelling of civil war, and the execution of criminals.
Luckily, the fighting part was easy for Yoko. All she had to do was resist the temptation to run away.”
                                    
                                    
                                    ― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                    “I do not need a scabbard to sheathe my mind.”
                                    
                                    
                                    ― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn
                                
                                
                                    “There are some things in this world you can never get back... There's no reclaiming that piece of the past. Don't you think it'd be better to abandon it completely and consider instead what you did wrong and learn from it?”
                                    
                                    
                                    ― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn
                                
                                
                                “Shiloh isn’t haunted – men are haunted.
Shiloh doesn’t care.”
                                
                                
                                    ― Thomas   Harris, quote from Red Dragon
                                
                            
                                “You will see that Charles set his sights high. Intelligent idlers always have, in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence.”
                                
                                
                                    ― John Fowles, quote from The French Lieutenant's Woman
                                
                            
                                “Why a raven?"
"To honor my father."
"The writing under it, is that Cyrillic?"
"Yes."
"What does it say?"
"Dar Vorona. Gift of the Raven. I am my father's gift."
"The raven is holding a bloody sword."
"I never said it was a nice gift.”
                                
                                
                                    ― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bites
                                
                            
                                “When I composed those verses I was preoccupied less with music than with an experience—an experience in which that beautiful musical allegory had shown its moral side, had become an awakening and a summons to a life vocation. The imperative form of the poem which specially displeases you is not the expression of a command and a will to teach but a command and warning directed towards myself. Even if you were not fully aware of this, my friend, you could have read it in the closing lines. I experienced an insight, you see, a realization and an inner vision, and wished to impress and hammer the moral of this vision into myself. That is the reason why this poem has remained in my memory. Whether the verses are good or bad they have achieved their aim, for the warning has lived on within me and has not been forgotten. It rings anew for me again to-day, and that is a wonderful little experience which your scorn cannot take away from me.”
                                
                                
                                    ― Hermann Hesse, quote from The Glass Bead Game
                                
                            
                                “I will go,” he said. “I will go to Troy.”
The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered green of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again.
He was watching me, his eyes as deep as earth.
“Will you come with me?” he asked.
The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death. “Yes,” I whipsered. “Yes.”
Relief broke in his face, and he reached for me. I let him hold me, let him press us length to length so close that nothing might fit between us.
Tears came, and fell. Above us, the constellations spun and the moon paced her weary course. We lay stricken and sleepless as the hours passed.”
                                
                                
                                    ― Madeline Miller, quote from The Song of Achilles
                                
                            
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