Author S Note Quotes

“Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.”
― Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight

“We are a country built by immigrants, dreams, daring, and opportunity. We are a country built by the horrors of slavery and genocide, the injustice of racism and exclusion. These realities exist side by side. It is our past and our present. The future is unwritten. This is a book about ghosts. For we live in a haunted house.”
― Libba Bray, Before the Devil Breaks You

“If you drop the weight you are carrying, it is okay. You can build yourself back up out of the pieces.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“Children of Blood and Bone was written during a time where I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men, women, and children being shot by the police. I felt afraid and angry and helpless, but this book was the one thing that made me feel like I could do something about it. I told myself that if just one person could read it and have their hearts or minds changed, then I would've done something meaningful against a problem that often feels so much bigger than myself.”
― Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone

“Understanding people’s difficulties and—just as crucial—helping people understand their own difficulties and teaching them concrete ways to help themselves will help them better deal with their own lives and, in turn, ours.”
― Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird

“Finally, thank you to Jarrod Perkins. I'm crying now just because I typed your name. I love you more than anyone. Ever. Times a hundred million billion. Etienne, Cricket, and Josh--they were all you, but none of them came even close to you. You are my best friend. You are my true love. You are my happily ever after. (author's acknowledgments)”
― Stephanie Perkins, Isla and the Happily Ever After

“Life is short and TBR lists are long.”
― Katja Millay

“Life is hard, but it's also crazy-beautiful. Fight for your best life. You deserve it.”
― Carmen Rodrigues, 34 Pieces of You

“Understanding people’s difficulties and—just as crucial—helping people understand their own difficulties and teaching them concrete ways to help themselves will help them better deal with their own lives and, in turn, ours.”
― Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird

“These are universals, as is the fear women feel during times of political upheaval that occur in what could still be called the outside world of men--whether during the Taiping Rebellion so many years ago or today for women in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan, or even right here in this country in the post-9/11 era. On the surface, we as American women are independent, free, and mobile, but at our cores we still long for love, friendship, happiness, tranquility, and to be heard.”
― Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

“I for one refuse to believe that an enterprise so well conceived, so scrupulously produced, and so widely loved can stay boneyarded for long.
And I have 1,898 letters from people who don't believe it either.”
― James Blish, Spock Must Die!

“We fold our immigrant selves into this veneer of what we think is African American girlhood. The result is more jagged than smooth. This tension between our inherited identities and our newly adopted selves filters into our relationships with other girls and the boys we love, and how we interact with the broken places around us.”
― Ibi Zoboi, American Street

“To tea, without which I would likely be dead.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“The values many of us take for granted today are the result of hard-fought battles that happened years, decades and centuries ago. Working alongside the civil right leaders we revere today, lik Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of now-forgotten activists who sacrificed everything they had so people today could live the way we do. Every generation needs to remember that--and to remember that it's up to us to make sacrifices of our own for the ones who will come next.”
― Robin Talley, Lies We Tell Ourselves

“To Cecelia, the friend I needed as a child and found as an adult, thank you for finding me at just the right time—on my knees, ready to give up writing forever, and for holding my hand in the dark and showing me the way.”
― K.A. Reynolds, The Land of Yesterday

“But nothing, I find, has prepared me for the sight of my own characters walking about. A playwright or screenwriter must expect it; a novelist doesn’t and naturally concludes that she has gone mad. (What do they need so many umbrellas for? Don’t they realise that they are imaginary?)”
― Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“And we will. Because we’re not broken. And we won’t be silenced. It is up to us to build webs of goodness wherever we go, up to us to uproot injustices and expose them to the light. So be brave, keep fighting, and I will fight alongside you.”
― Aditi Khorana, The Library of Fates

“In the period of my life that Fred and I had this conversation I was writing a thesis at Melbourne University as part of a masters in creative writing, entitled Melancholy Ever After, about the effect of melancholy on narrative structure in fairy tales.”
― Penni Russon, Only Ever Always

“I always listen to everything you say. You have very authoritative hair.”
― Penni Russon, Only Ever Always

“Also, I'd like to send greetings to all the students who are reading my story – adult students, undergraduates, graduate students, part time students, life long learners, moms who are taking courses, students in trade and vocational programs, or schools of the arts, etc. Being a student can be challenging, but education is always worthwhile. It has been a long time since I was in graduate school, (I graduated from the University of Paris prior to Étienne Tempier's attempt to revise the curriculum), but my education was an investment in myself that no one can steal or repossess. And the same is true of your education. -SR”
― Sylvain Reynard

“I wanted to explore the relationships that make us who we are, as well as how we help and hinder one another. Language is a gate that we can open and close on people. The words we use shape perception, as do the books we read, the stories we tell one another, and the stories we tell ourselves. The foreign staff and subscribers of the Library were considered “enemy aliens,” and several were interned. Jewish subscribers were not allowed to enter the Library, and many were later killed in concentration camps. A friend said she believes that in reading stories set in World War II, people like to ask themselves what they would have done. I think a better question to ask is what can we do now to ensure that libraries and learning are accessible to all and that we treat people with dignity and compassion.”
― Janet Skeslien Charles, The Paris Library

“But if history has preserved more sadness than joy, it is fiction’s job to find the joy there is and elaborate, expand, imagine.”
― Emma-Claire Sunday, The Duke's Sister and I