Samiha Tasnim

We Should All Be Feminists was first presented as a TED talk given in the United Kingdom at TEDxEuston, in 2012
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The person more qualified to lead is not the physically stronger person. It is the more intelligent, the more knowledgeable, the more creative, more innovative. And there are no hormones for those attributes. A man is as likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative, creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.


The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are. Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn't have the weight of gender expectations.


Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.



It might have made sad sense.



It's just that sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.



Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve.



Not everyone has a sob story, Charlie, and even if they do, it's no excuse.



And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.



I don't know if you've ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That's why I'm trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning.



I guess what I'm saying is that this all feels very familiar. But it's not mine to be familiar about.



I don't know how much longer I can keep going without a friend. I used to be able to do it very easily, but that was before I knew what having a friend was like. It's much easier not to know things sometimes.



Not because she's a bad person or shallow or mean. But because things change. And friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody.



I want to make him stop hurting, but I can't. So, I just follow him around whenever he wants to show me his world.



“I would die for you. But I won't live for you.”



I was very grateful to have heard it again. Because I guess we all forget sometimes. And I think everyone is special in their own way. I really do.



There's something about that tunnel that leads to downtown. It's glorious at night. Just glorious. You start on one side of the mountain, and it's dark, and the radio is loud. As you enter the tunnel, the wind gets sucked away, and you squint from the lights overhead. When you adjust to the lights, you can see the other side in the distance just as the sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach. Then, you're in the middle of the tunnel, and everything becomes a calm dream. As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get there fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you. And the radio comes back even louder than you remember it. And the wind is waiting. And you fly out of the tunnel onto the bridge. And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it. It really is a grand entrance.



I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

Our Dragon doesn't eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley.


“I don't want more sense!” I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. “Not if sense means I'll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that's worth holding on to?”


That was a story, too; they all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse.

Since Maria had decided to die her cat would have to fend for itself.


Enemies of the Party were not merely saboteurs, spies, and wreckers of industry, but doubters of the Party line, doubters of the society which awaited them.


—It's my fault.
—What was your fault?
—My brother's death: I threw a snowball at him. I'd packed it with stones and dirt and grit. Arkady was hurt, it hit him in the head. He ran off. Maybe it made him dizzy, maybe that's why he couldn't see the train. The dirt they found in his mouth: that was my fault. I threw it at him.
—Your brother's death was an accident. There's no reason for you to feel any guilt. But you did well telling me the truth. Now go back to your parents.
—I haven't told them about the snowball with dirt and the mud and the stones.
—Perhaps they don't need to know.
—They'd be so angry. Because that was the last time I ever saw him. Sir, we played nicely most of the time. And we would've played nicely again, we would've made up, we would've been friends again, I'm sure of it. But now I can't make it up to him, I can't ever say sorry.


But having a family had made him fearful. He was able to imagine far worse things than his own death.


...not even those who kept this machinery of fear ticking, could be certain that the system they sustained would not one day swallow them too.


My innocence offends you because you wish me to be guilty. You wish me to be guilty because you've arrested me.


To stand up for someone was to stitch your fate into the lining of theirs.


Leo had the confirmation he was looking for. Major Kuzmin's offer was clear. If he denounced his wife he'd have their continued confidence. What had Vasili said? If you survive this scandal you'll one day berunning the MGB. I'm sure of it. Promotion was a sentence away. The room was silent.
Major Kuzmin leaned forward: —Leo?
Leo stood up, straightened the jacket of his uniform: —My wife is innocent.


They were equals as they had never been equal before. If he wanted to hear about love, the first verse was his to sing.


Did his work have meaning or was it merely a means to survive? There was nothing shameful about trying to survive—it was the occupation of the majority. However, was it enough to live in squalor and not even be rewarded with a sense of pride, not even to be sustained by a sense that what he did served some purpose?


They'd murdered together, deceived together, plotted and planned and lied together. They were criminals, the two of them, them against the world. It was time to consummate this new relationship. If only they could stay here, live here in this exact moment, hidden in the forest, enjoying these feelings forever.


The price of this story was the audience's innocence.


But she refused to accept that she was going to be the one to get them caught just because she wasn't strong enough, refused to accept the idea that they'd fail because she was weak.


Everyone has a reason to live. You were hers. But you were mine too. The only difference between us was that I was sure you were alive.


He'd tried to bury the past. And now his brother had murdered his way back into his life.

Was she capable of murder? Most people were, if you came to it. Capable not of murder in general, but of one particular individual murder.


He paused in the doorway to say, over his shoulder: “Good show.”
“That,” said Anthony as the door closed behind him, “denotes supreme British approval.”

We can only change the future, not the past or present. If I go back, then I have already been back.'


Murder was just another service that could be purchased.


When you decide to die, Artemis thought sluggishly, it doesn't matter how many people want to kill you.


That's wonderful. Opal Koboi. I knew this little trip was missing a psychotic element.


‘I bet,' said Mulch. ‘That you would set the world on fire, just to watch it burn.'


No, he decided. There were still people who deserved to be stolen from, or exposed, or dropped in deep jungle with only flip-flops and a spoon. He would just have to put more effort into finding them.


Artemis gazed up at his friend through a red haze.
‘I'm sorry I lied to you, Holly. Truly. You've done so much.'
Holly's eyes were distant.
‘Maybe you made the wrong decision; maybe I would have made that decision myself. We're from different worlds, Artemis. We will always have doubts about each other. Let's just carry on and leave the past in the past, where it should be.'


It's the big time paradox. If I had done nothing, then nothing would have needed to be done.


‘You know something, Fowl? You did a good thing here. For its own sake. Not one penny of profit.'
Artemis grimaced. ‘I know. I'm appalled.'


Angeline held him at arm's length. ‘I was in the diseased hell of that pixie's brain, Artemis. Don't you dare lie to me and say that I wasn't. I saw your friends almost die to help you. I saw Butler's heart stop. I saw you save us all. Look me in the eye and tell me these things did not happen.'

Even biographies not saturated with disease were vulnerable to holes and distortions.


My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment.


There's no peace in being unsure of everything all the time.

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
-Langston Hughes


I do not know if these hands will become
Malcolm's—raised and fisted
or Martin's—open and asking
or James's—curled around a pen.
I do not know if these hands will be
Rosa's
or Ruby's
gently gloved
and fiercely folded
calmly in a lap,
on a desk,
around a book,
ready
to change the world . .


You'll face this in your life someday,
my mother will tell us
over and over again.
A moment when you walk into a room and
no one there is like you.
It'll be scary sometimes.


Somewhere in my brain
each laugh, tear and lullaby
becomes memory


We're as good as anybody,
my mother whispers.
As good as anybody


Everyone else, she says,
has a new place to be now.
Everyone else
has gone away.
And now coming back home
isn't really coming back home
at all


Lullaby
At night, every living thing competes
for a chance to be heard.
The crickets
and frogs call out.
Sometimes, there's the soft
who-whoo of an owl lost
amid the pines.
Even the dogs won't rest until
they've howled
at the moon.
But the crickets always win, long after
the frogs stop croaking
and the owl has found its way home.
Long after the dogs have lain down
losing the battle against sleep,
the crickets keep going
as though they know their song
is our lullaby.


Will the words end, I ask
whenever I remember to.
Nope, my sister says, all of five years old now,
and promising me
infinity.


In my own head,
it's real as anything.


I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began—
I loved my friend.
—Langston Hughes


But on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly
never dies.


Even the silence
has a story to tell you.
Just listen. Listen.


And on those days, so much light and warmth fills
the room that it's hard not to believe
in a little bit
of everything.


Do you remember . . . ?
someone's always asking and
someone else, always does.


No accidents, my mother says. Just fate and faith
and reasons.


When there are many worlds
you can choose the one
you walk into each day.


When there are many worlds, love can wrap itself
around you, say, Don't cry. Say, You are as good as anyone.
Say, Keep remembering me. And you know, even as the
world explodes
around you—that you are loved . . .


Each day a new world
opens itself up to you. And all the worlds you are—
Ohio and Greenville
Woodson and Irby
Gunnar's child and Jack's daughter
Jehovah's Witness and nonbeliever
listener and writer
Jackie and Jacqueline—
gather into one world
called You
where You decide
what each world
and each story
and each ending
will finally be.

But I am more than a name. More than they tell me. More than the facts and statistics they fill me with.


I lift the corner of my mouth.
Then the other: a smile. Because I know I am supposed to.


Where did those words go, those words that were once in my
head?


Eyes don't breathe. I know that much.
But hers look breathless.


Are the details of our lives who we are, or is it owning those details that
makes the difference?


Maybe that is all any life is composed of, trivia that eventually adds up to a person, and maybe I just don't have enough of it yet to be a whole one.


The dictionary says my identity should be all about being separate or distinct, and yet it feels like it is so wrapped up in others.


I'm afraid that for the rest of my two or two hundred years I will still have all these questions and I will never fit in.

...when you truly start to care about someone, you become vulnerable to all sorts of things.

In horse racing they put these slats on either side of the horse's head, blocking the creature's peripheral vision. They're called blinders. They don't actually blind the horse, but they allow the horse to see only what's right in front of it; otherwise it might freak out and lose the race.
People live with blinders too; but ours are invisible, and much more sophisticated. Most of the time we don't even know they're there. Maybe we need them, though, because if we took in everything all at once, we'd lose our minds. Or worse, our souls. We'd see, we'd hear, we'd feel so deeply that we might never resurface.


For as long as I can remember I've stolen,
Ripping all the hurts from the people I love,
And from no one else.
I don't choose it,
I don't want it,
But because they found a place in my heart
I steal their pain as soon as I'm near them,
And all because I got caught caring.
But those others,
ALL the others,
Dripping their disapproval like summer sweat,
They're on the outside,
And I will never let them in.
Never.
Let them keep their broken bones,
Shed their own blood,
I hate them.
I have to hate them, don't you see?
Because what if I didn't?
What if I suddenly started to care?
And their friends became my friends,
And every ache and pain,
Every last bit of damage,
Drained from them to me,
Until I was nothing but fractures and sprains,
Cuts and concussions,
But as long as I keep them on the right side of resentment,
Despising them all,
I'm safe.
I rise, battered but not broken.
Never broken.


Because once you stop marveling at that firefly you caught in a jar, it sits on a shelf with no one to let it out


If your heart tells you something but your mind tells you something else, which do you believe? Both are just as apt to lie. In fact, they play at deceit all the time. Mostly they balance each other, giving us that crucial reality check. But what happens on the rare occasions when they conspire together?


Happiness is a vector. It's movement. Like my own momentum across the pool, joy can only be defined by the speed at which you're moving away from pain.


““Guard your heart,” she told me.
“That is your hero's sword.””


And I believe he could keep his broken leg. It's amazing the things you can hold on to when you're determined to keep them, and the immunity you can develop if you truly want to.


...everyone must feel their own pain—and as awful as that is, it's also wonderful...


I believe what I can see, but now I also believe there is room in the world for miracles. Maybe not the ones we expect, but they're miracles all the same. They happen every day if only we pay attention.

 A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

JACK LONDON, WHITE FANG

 



I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.

 



“He was alone,” as James Joyce wrote of Stephen Dedalus, his artist as a young man. “He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”




The desert sharpened the sweet ache of his longing, amplified it, gave shape to it in sere geology and clean slant of light.

 



I'd like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

 



You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.

 



I now walk into the wild.

 



Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty

 



I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly.

 



II grew up exuberant in body but with a nervy, craving mind. It was wanting something more, something tangible. It sought for reality intensely, always as if it were not there... But you see at once what I do. I climb.

JOHN MENLOVE EDWARDS, “LETTER FROM A MAN”


I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt.

 



But we little know until tried how much of the uncontrollable there is in us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and up dangerous heights, let the judgement forbid as it may.

JOHN MUIR, THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA

 



It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.

 



At that stage of my youth, death remained as abstract a concept as non-Euclidean geometry or marriage. I didn't yet appreciate its terrible finality or the havoc it could wreak on those who'd entrusted the deceased with their hearts. I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn't resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink. The hint of what was concealed in those shadows terrified me, but I caught sight of something in the glimpse, some forbidden and elemental riddle that was no less compelling than the sweet, hidden petals of a woman's sex.

 



Wilderness appealed to those bored or disgusted with man and his works. It not only offered an escape from society but also was an ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he frequently made of his own soul. The solitude and total freedom of the wilderness created a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation.

RODERICK NASH, WILDERNESS AND THE AMERICAN MIND

 



TWO YEARS HE WALKS THE EARTH. NO PHONE, NO POOL, NO PETS, NO CIGARETTES. ULTIMATE FREEDOM. AN EXTREMIST. ANAESTHETIC VOYAGER WHOSE HOME IS THE ROAD. ESCAPED FROM ATLANTA. THOU SHALT NOT RETURN, ‘CAUSE “THE WEST IS THE BEST. “ AND NOW AFTER TWO RAMBLING YEARS COMES THE FINAL AND GREATEST ADVENTURE. THE CLIMACTIC BATTLE TO KILL THE FALSE BEING WITHIN AND VICTORIOUSLY CONCLUDE THE SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION. TEN DAYS AND NIGHTS OF FREIGHT TRAINS AND HITCHHIKING BRING HIM TO THE GREAT WHITE NORTH. NO LONGER TO BE POISONED BY CIVILIZATION HE FLEES, AND WALKS ALONE UPON THE LAND TO BECOME LOST IN THE WILD.

ALEXANDER SUPERTRAMP MAY1992

 



I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor—such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps—what more can the heart of a man desire?

 



Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man's garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever,—to be the dwelling of man, we say,—so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can. Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific,—not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on, or to be buried in,— no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there,— the home, this, of Necessity and Fate. There was clearly felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. It was a place of heathenism and superstitious rites,—to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we... What is it to be admitted to a museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star's surface, some hard matter in its home! I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,—that my body might,—but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

HENRY DAVID THOREAU, “KTAADN”

 



I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fear not spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,—that my body might,—but I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we? HENRY DAVID THOREAU, “KTAADN”

 



Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That's why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that's why they write symphonies. Now, you can't advance in this direction without a certain faith. You can't make such discoveries without spiritual equipment. And the basic elements of this equipment are in the Gospels. What are they? To begin with, love of one's neighbor, which is the supreme form of vital energy. Once it fills the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself. And then the two basic ideals of modem man—without them he is unthinkable—the idea offree personality and the idea of life as sacrifice.

BORIS PASTERNAK, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO - PASSAGE HIGHLIGHTED IN ONE OF THE BOOKS FOUND WITH CHRISTOPHER MCCANDLESS'S REMAINS;UNDERSCORING BY MCCANDLESS




For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life. She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power, to give birth out of love for life to successors who would do it in her place.

 



There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom.

This was a surprisingly good read. I didn't think the story of a rich, spoilt brat could be so moving. I'm looking forward to the rest of the books of the series. :D

I'm here, I said, and it felt shockingly comforting, those words. When I'm panicked, I say them aloud to myself. I'm here. I don't usually feel that I am. I feel like a warm gust of wind could exhale my way and I'd be disappeared forever, not even a sliver of fingernail left behind. On some days, I find this thought calming; on others it chills me.


“I can be nice, you know?” she said, her brow still furrowed. She seemed on the edge of tears herself.
“I know. It's just that I'm wondering why you've decided to be nice to me now.”
“Sometimes I can't. But right now, I can. When everyone's asleep and everything's quiet, it's easier.”

I had too much left unfinished—my soul was full of unfulfilled desires and yearnings.

 



My heart was too full, my thoughts a storm of paper fragments.




For all who have seen ghosts and spirits are marked with a stain...




Haunted, I chafe at the tight orbit of mahjong parties that I once thought so glamorous, and glance over my shoulder for wind and shadows, yearning for the forbidden.

 



When Er Lang comes for his answer, I will tell him that I've always thought he was a monster. And that I want to be his bride. 

It is all very well to want things to happen-they might not be pleasant things.




“If you must be Sherlock Holmes,” she observed, “I'll get you a nice little syringe and a bottle labelled Cocaine, but for God's sake leave that violin alone.”

For in the end, it is all about memory, its sources and its magnitude, and, of course, its consequences.

“Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story . . . —Virginia Woolf


“The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” Virginia Woolf


“She felt very young, at the same time unspeakably aged.” Virginia Woolf


“Alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.” Virginia Woolf


“I am rooted, but I flow.” Virginia Woolf

She was nicknamed The Graveyard. Any secret, any piece of confidential information, personal or otherwise, that went in never, ever came back out. You knew you were safe; you knew you would never be judged or, if you were it would be silently, so you'd never know. She was perfectly named with a birth name that meant consistency and fortitude, and she was appropriately nicknamed; she was solid, permanent and steady, stoic but oddly comforting.


There are more people involved in telling a story than the writer, and you know that.


‘You look far away.'
‘I was thinking.'
‘I shall alert the authorities at once.'”


“...but sometimes when people are involved, business has to stop being business and the human must win.”


But I was never the brave one. Why it should fall upon me to become that now is beyond me.


‘It's very simple. If you were to randomly select one hundred people from a phone directory, you would not only find a story, you would find one hundred stories, because everybody, every single person, has a story to tell. Every single ordinary person has an extraordinary story. We might all think that we are unremarkable, that our lives are boring, just because we aren't doing ground-breaking things or making headlines or winning awards. But the truth is we all do something that is fascinating, that is brave, that is something we should be proud of. Every day people do things that are not celebrated. That is what we should be writing about. The unsung heroes, the people that don't believe they are heroes at all because they are just doing what they believe they have to do in their lives.'


‘Everybody has a story to tell,' she said. ‘That is what links us all...'

“There have been many times of last days,” he said, “and they mark not only endings but beginnings.”

 



“Is there a pattern to it all?” Sandy demanded. “Or is it all chaos and chance?”

“I was the one who was fragile, though I didn't know at the time just how easy it would be for me to SHATTER.”
(Chapter:When he saw Brianna)

“But then I remember she's not my friend anymore. So why do I still care?”
(Chapter:Out The Window)

“That's what Ms. Lane, my writing teacher, would say. Spill it out onto the page. Sometimes it's the only way for thoughts heavy as bricks to become feathers and fly away.”
(Chapter:Write It Out)

“I wonder— if I found a mask, put it on, and tied it fast, would I be okay again?”
(Chapter:Elijah Wears Black)

“It seemed to me that only words and rhymes made any sense. Only they were safe. Nouns and verbs constructed in straight lines made the world a saner, safer place.”
(Chapter:The Bell Rings)

“I never really felt alive unless I was up onstage. It's like that old saying, “If a tree falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” If I'm here but nobody sees me, am I really alive?”
(Chapter:A Christmas Carol)

“THERE'S SOMETHING DARK in the corner of the hallway, but every time I try to look, it disappears. There's something cold in the corner of the hallway, but every time I go to check it out, it moves away. There's something talking to me from the corner of the hallway. I can't see what it is, but I lean in close to listen. I used to hear voices in the halls, whispering things like slut, liar, whore I hear voices on the H Hall, too, even though there's nobody here but me. They're telling me this is the only place where Nobody can touch me. Nobody can hurt me. Nobody can reach me. “You can stay here forever,” they whisper.”
(Chapter:There's Something Dark)

“To be friendless in a crowd is the worst kind of loneliness.”
(Chapter:Third Lunch)

“Looks like I will spend the whole day on the hallway. Watching other kids, wondering if their lives are hopeless and screwed up like mine.”
(Chapter:I'm Definitely)

“But I don't get to write your story. I must leave that up to you. I just hope you understand, it isn't through.”
(Chapter:The Stage)

“THINGS THAT FALL Night falls. Water falls. Snow falls, soft and wet, gathering on tree branches and dirty streets. People fall in love, out of love, to sleep. Sometimes they even fall from rooftops. And sometimes they j u m p”
(Chapter:Things That Fall)

““If you're all suicides, then what's your story?” I ask the Hangman. “You don't seem like the self-destructive type.” “I'm not,” he replies. “I fell. Unfortunately I had a rope around my neck at the time.” “Who put it there?” I ask. “I did. But I didn't want to die. I just wanted to get somebody's attention. You know all about that, don't you, Ally?””
(Chapter:How it Happened)

“I feel my life unraveling like yarn. The strands come loose, and then they fly away. What happens when I reach the end of it? Make a knot and hold on, or let go?”
(Chapter:Dear Frank)

“When you missed that curve, did it cross your mind, that I might be following behind?”
(Chapter:Follow the Leader)

“and I wonder how people have the guts to stay so long on such an angry planet. “
(Chapter:The Residents of ICU)

“We're all a little ruined, I guess”
(Chapter:When We Leave)

“The real job will be finding out who I am inside, because that's all I've got left”
(Chapter:My Body)

I'd never have thought a fairy-tale could hold so much sway over reality. Abel Tannatek is a gifted storyteller, but the author herself is even better.
An amazing read indeed.

Artemis avoided other teenagers and resented being sent to school, preferring to spend his time plotting his next crime. So even though his involvement with the goblin uprising during his fourteenth year was to be traumatic, terrifying and dangerous, it was probably the best thing that could have happened. At least he spent some time outdoors and got to meet some new people. It's a pity most of them were trying to kill him.


‘We're not giving up, Artemis,' she said softly. ‘We're regrouping. There's a difference. We'll be back. Remember, it's always darkest before the dawn.'
Artemis looked at her. ‘What dawn? We're in the Arctic, remember.'


To remind you that deep beneath the layers of deviousness, there is a spark of decency. Perhaps you could blow on that spark occasionally.

All I could do was talk, but no one on Earth could hear me.


In violence, it is the getting away that you concentrate on. When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping only to land away from where you are.


The truth was that the line between the living and the dead could be, it seemed, murky and blurred.


“Sometimes I think clues find their way in good time,” he said. “If they want to be found, that is.” It was cryptic, sort of a Confucius-says answer, but it worked on almost every civilian.


Odd girls who had found each other in the strangest way—in the shiver she had felt when I passed.


This is just a temporary hell, not a permanent one.


“When the dead are done with the living,” Franny said to me, “the living can go on to other things.”


Late at night the air above hospitals and senior citizen homes was often thick and fast with souls.


When Buckley stood on the iron chair—“Now scoot up my back,” my father said, stooping forward, “and grab on to my shoulders,” not knowing if he'd have the strength to lift him up from there—I crossed my fingers hard in heaven and held my breath. In the cornfield, yes, but, in this moment, repairing the most basic fabric of their previous day-to-day lives, challenging his injury to take a moment like this back, my father became my hero.


Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.


Murder had a blood red door on the other side of which was everything unimaginable to everyone.

...small forgotten moments with Buckley, the accidents of love that happened with his son.


I felt, if I were to say any word, churned. Not as a verb but as an adjective. Happy + Frightened = Churned.


I hold up bones; I wish like broken glass they could court light... still I try to place these pieces back together, to set them firm, to make murdered girls live again.


In some way I could not account for—had they reached a state of bliss? were my parents back together forever? had Buckley begun to tell someone his troubles? would my father's heart truly heal?—I was done yearning for them, needing them to yearn for me. Though I still would. Though they still would. Always.


These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections—sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent—that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.

My experience with Stephen King involved only Carrie,which I'd found to be okay-ish and rather crazy, so I can't say I was expecting much when I began to read this one. But boy-oh-boy did it turn out to be great! Goes to show, first impressions don't always show it true.

If we make it through this, we will be friends. Bonded by trauma.


“Well?” said Holly, her face inches from his own. “We survived. Does that mean we're friends now? Bonded by trauma.”
Artemis frowned. Friends? Did he have room in his life for a friend? Then again, did he have a choice in the matter?
“Yes,” he replied. “I've had little experience in this area, so I may have to read up on it.”
Holly rolled her eyes. “Friendship is not a science, Mud Boy. Forget about your massive brain for one minute. Just do what you feel is right.”


I have friends? thought Artemis Fowl the Second. I have friends.


It seemed as though good was a more powerful motivation than bad. Who would have thought it?


Seven and a half hours to save the world. Isn't there some law that says we get at least twenty-four?


“... By the time anyone gets here, we'll either be heroes or outlaws.”
“We're already outlaws,” said Artemis.
“True,” agreed Holly. “But soon we could be outlaws with no one chasing us.”