“Light a candle for me, I used to whisper to no one.
Someone
Anyone
If you're out there
Please tell me you can feel this fire.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“She put my hand in the fire once. Jus to see if it would burn, she said. Just to check if it was a regular hand, she said. I was 6 years old then. I remember because it was my birthday.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“I don't consider myself a moral man. I do not philosophize about life or bother with laws and principles that govern most people. I do not pretend to know the difference between right and wrong. But I do live by a certain kind of code. And somethimes, I think, you have how to shoot first.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“I fold myself into a corner of this room and bury my head in my knees and rock back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and I wish and I wish and I wish and I dream of impossible things until I've cried myself to sleep.
I wonder what it would be like to have a friend.
And then I wonder who else is locked in this asylum. I wonder where the other screams are coming from.
I wonder if they're coming from me.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“On the bleakst days you have to keep your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give theam a chance to wash out the pain in order to see fresh and clear once again. (p. 193)”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“I've learned to stare at things. The walls. My hands. The cracks in the walls. The lines on my fingers. The shades of gray in the concrete. The shape of my fingernails. I pick one thing and stare at it for what must be hours. I keep time in my head by counting the seconds as they pass. I keep days in my head by writing them down. Today is day two. Today is the second day. Today is a day.
Today.
It's so cold. It's so cold. It's so cold.
Please please please
I started screaming today.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“Because these words I write down are the only proof I have that I'm still alive”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“No one wants a dandelion.
They crop up all over the place, ugly and unfortunate, an average blossom in a world desperatly seeking beauty. They're weeds, people say. They're uninteresting and offer no fragrance and there are too many of them, too much of them, we don't want them, destroy them.
Dandelions are a nuisance,
We desire the buttercups, the daffodils, the morning glories. We want the azalea, the poinsettia, the calla lily. We pluck them from our gradens and plant them in our homes and we don't seem to remember their toxic nature.
We don't seem to care that
if you get too close?
if you take a small bite?
The beauty is replaced wit pain and laced with a posion that laughs in your blood, destroys your organs, infevts your heart.
But pick a dandelion.
Pick a dandelion and make a salad, eat the leaves, the flower, the stem. Thread it in your hair, plant it in the ground and watch it thrive.
Pick a dandelion and close your eyes
make a wish
blow it into the wind.
Watch it
change
the
world.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“I’ve never read anything like this before. I’ve never read anything that could speak directly to my bones.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“This doesn’t happen. People aren’t forgotten like this. Not abandoned like this.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“He was their father, her husband, and the reason they all died a brutal, untimely death. And some days i wonder why I insist on keeping myself alive.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
“Because i never really know, i still can’t tell the difference, I’m never quite certain whether or not i’m actually alive.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Unite Me
Tahereh Mafi
Born place: The United States
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“I have read so many books. And yet, like most Autodidacts, I am never quite sure of what I have gained from them. There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there is to know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of no where, weaving together all the disparate strands of my reading. And then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates and no matter how often I reread the same lines they seem to flee ever further with each subsequent reading and I see myself as some mad old fool who thinks her stomach is full because she's been reading the menu.”
― Muriel Barbery, quote from The Elegance of the Hedgehog
“Everyone, deep in their hearts, is waiting for the end of the world to come.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from 1Q84
“You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Jude the Obscure
“Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt”
― Virgil, quote from The Aeneid
“As the Brotherhood got down to business, he found himself putting his hand on the dog’s big head and stroking the soft fur…playing with an ear…dipping down and finding the long waves that flowed from the animal’s broad, strong chest.
Not that any of that meant he was keeping the the animal, of course.
It just felt nice, was all.”
― J.R. Ward, quote from Lover Avenged
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Adventures in the Sc...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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