Quotes from These Shallow Graves

“That was what people did when they wanted to stop a girl from doing something—they shamed her.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Why is it, she wondered now, that boys get to do things and be things and girls only get to watch?”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither. Yet how can we help them if we don't even know about them? And how can we know about them if no one writes about them? Is it so wrong to want to know things?”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Sir, no amount of money, no matter how vast, could induce me to stroll, perambulate, promenade, or engage in any form of locomotion with you whatsoever. Good evening.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“As a child, she’d thought all the noise and commotion was the most wild, wonderful game, but as she’d grown older, she understood why everyone rushed around so: they were chasing a story.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Headstrong is just a word, Katie - a word others call you when you don't do what they want.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“No. I meant stay with me today. And tomorrow. And every day after.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“I’d wish you good luck, but you won’t need it. You get to write your own story now. Nothing’s luckier than that.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Fac quod faciendum est,' " Jo read aloud. "Do what must be done.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“And besides, I couldn't stay at the party. It was too dangerous. I nearly died."
"From what?"
"Boredom.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“The thing is, you can't ever really know how rotten someone will turn out to be.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Sometimes you have to do wrong to do right.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“He was a flame and she’d gotten burned, and the pain was terrible, yet it didn’t make the fire any less alluring.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Murder is not a suitable topic of conversation for a young lady.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Her fear was strong, but her need for the truth was stronger.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“But you are a different sort of girl. Not at all what I expected you to be. And this is a different sort of time. And so I am hopeful for all the things you may yet find.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“If you're going to bury the past, bury it deep, girl. Shallow Graves always give up their dead.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“«Ένα ποτό, ένα τσιγάρο, καμία υποχρέωση να ευχαριστήσεις οποιονδήποτε άλλον εκτός από τον εαυτό σου. Ελευθερία. Αυτή είναι η απάντησή μου. Η ελευθερία να είσαι εσύ το καλύτερο πράγμα που σου συνέβη».”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“To have a purpose in life--what does that feel like?”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Headstrong is just a word--a word others call you when you don't do what they want.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“If only she could be bold enough, and brave enough, to claim the things she wanted: love, a purpose, a life. But could she be?”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Asking questions, demanding explanations—these things always led to trouble”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“The truth can be a hard thing, Jo. It's often best left hidden.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

“Don't let the darkness that's been visited upon this family pull you in so deeply, you cannot get out. Turn back from it, darling Jo... he'd warned her. He didn't seem to understand that turning your back on the darkness didn't mean the darkness would turn its back on you.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from These Shallow Graves

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“Hive Queen: They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo- knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.

Pequenino: While collectively...

Hive Queen: Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.>

Pequenino: So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals-- and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with.

Hive Queen: Exactly.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Xenocide

“Like all men who look this good, Frank has no interest in women.”
― Dennis Sharpe, quote from Blood & Spirits

“There's nothing more stubborn than a fact. That is why you hate them so much. They offend you.”
― Tom Rob Smith, quote from Child 44

“The boy was silent as we went. Unsurprising, this—he had seldom left London in his life before. I guessed him to be gazing about in dumbstruck admiration.
"What an appalling place," he [Nathaniel] said. - Bartimaeus”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Golem's Eye

“People see stories everywhere,” Regine says. “That’s what my father used to say. We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn’t true.” She glances back at Seth. “We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we’d go crazy.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This

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