Nicola > Nicola's Quotes

“Yr had a region called the Fear-bog. Lactamaeon had taken her there once to see the monsters and corpses of her nightmares accumulating there from year after year of terrifying dreams. They had swum through the almost solid ground.

She had said, What is that awful stench?

Shame and secrecy, Bird-one, shame and secrecy, he had answered.”
― Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“And what does that signify to you?" he said, perhaps forgetting that if she could speak truly to the world, she would not be a mental patient.”
― Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“People were differentiated by this substance, which was called nganon. Nganon was a concentrate which was defined in each person by nurture and circumstance. She believed that she and a certain few others were not of the same nganon as the rest of Earth's people. At first Deborah had thought that it was only she who was set apart from human kind, but others of the un-dead on D ward seemed to be tainted as she was. All of her life, herself and all her possessions had been imbued with her essence, the poisonous nganon. She had never lent her clothes or books or pencils, or let anyone touch any of her things, and she had often borrowed or stolen from other children at school or camp, delighting, until their stolen nganon wore off them, in the health and purity and grace of the possessions.”
― Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“Can you read my thoughts?" she asked them.
"Are you talking to me?" Lee said.
"To all of you. Can you read my thoughts?"
"What are you trying to do—get me sent to seclusion?"
"Go to hell", Helene said pleasantly.
"Don't look at me," Miss Coral said, with the genteel horror of a countess visiting an abattoir, "I can't even read my own.”
― Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“To praise one thing is not to damn another.”
― Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“Do you know why you’re here?' the doctor said.
Clumsiness. Clumsiness is the first and then we have a list: lazy, wayward, headstrong, fat, ugly, mean, tactless, and cruel. Also a liar. That category includes subheads: (a) False blindness, imaginary pains causing real doubling-up, untrue lapses of hearing, lying leg injuries, fake dizziness, and unproved and malicious malingering s; (b) Being a bad sport. Did I leave out unfriendliness?…Also unfriendliness.”
― Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.”
― Darren Shan

“I don't like it, but my hands are tied. I just want you to know this: if I ever get the chance to betray you, I will. If the opportunity arises to pay you back, I'll take it. You'll never be able to trust me.”
― Darren Shan, Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare

“...The pain didn't bother me. In fact, I welcome it: It meant I was alive. ”
― Darren Shan, The Vampire's Assistant

“Maybe you're going insane."
"Maybe," agreed Kernel.
"I was joking."
"I wasn't.”
― Darren Shan, Wolf Island

“What are you doing?"
"Looking for my fangs."
"We don't grow fangs you idiot!”
― Darren Shan, Cirque du Freak: A Living Nightmare

“Stick it up your crack, you warped son of a mutant b*tch!”
― Darren Shan, Lord Loss

“You can't hang around waiting for somebody else to pull your strings. Destiny's what you make of it. You have to face whatever life throws at you. And if it throws more than you'd like, more than you think you can handle? Well then you just have to find the heroism within yourself and play out the hand you've been dealt. The universe never sets a challenge that can't be met. You just need to believe in yourself in order to find the strength to face it.”
― Darren Shan, Hell's Heroes

“You might imagine that a person would resort to self-mutilation only under extremes of duress, but once I'd crossed that line the first time, taken that fateful step off the precipice, then almost any reason was a good enough reason, almost any provocation was provocation enough. Cutting was my all-purpose solution.”
― Caroline Kettlewell, Skin Game

“For some reason, I believed that I had above all else an obligation to protect everyone-- my teachers, my family-- from the knowledge of my cutting. What they did not know would not cause them pain.”
― Caroline Kettlewell

“Well how many troubles should equal a legitimate reason for self-mutilation? Ten? Twenty? One hundred? And how monumental must these troubles be? There’s probably no critical mass beyond which cutting yourself would ever seem to most people like a reasonable choice. I cut because it did look that way to me. I cut because something had to give. I cut because the alternatives were worse.”
― Caroline Kettlewell, Skin Game

“Well, Kessa, I am glad to see that you're taking your body seriously. I shudder when I see the girls leaving class and heading for the nearest hamburger, coke, and French fry station.The thought of them pouring all those dead calories into themselves makes me want to cry. You'd think after a rigorous dance class they'd have more respect for their bodies.”
― Steven Levenkron, The Best Little Girl in the World

“[. . .] and in addition to the feeling of being full there was another more terrifying one, as if a hundred appetites were raging out of control within her. She couldn't explain it, but she felt as if everything was in chaos and something awful was going to happen. She had eaten and now something terrible would occur.”
― Steven Levenkron, The Best Little Girl in the World

“The nerves of the skin send pain signals to the brain to warn us of the danger from and impending injury. In the case of self-inflicted wounding, this pain acts as the body's own defense mechanism to stop one from proceeding in the effort at physical injury. If a person proceeds despite the pain, that means that he or she is motivated by something stronger than the pain, something that makes him or her capable of ignoring or enduring it.”
― Steven Levenkron

“She began to be reassured by these pains, tangible symbols of her success in becoming thinner than anyone else. Her only identity was being "the skinniest." She had to feel it.”
― Steven Levenkron, Kessa

“How silly people were to eat. They thought they needed food for energy, but they didn't. Energy came from will, from self-control.”
― Steven Levenkron, The Best Little Girl in the World

“She should have died on that day. Perhaps, in a way, she had.”
― Anne Cassidy, Looking for JJ

“When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

“I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls

“It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Gym should be illegal. It's humiliating.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Write about the emotions you fear the most.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson

“I am getting better at smiling when people expect it.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak