Quotes by Tahereh Mafi

We breathe when we're wrong, we breathe when we're right, we breathe even as we slip off the ledge toward an early grave. It cannot be undone.

Red was ruby, green was fluorescent, yellow was simply incandescent. Color was life. Color was everything.
Color, you see, was the universal sign of magic.

Nothing in this life will ever make sense to me but I can't help but try to collect the change and hope it's enough to pay for our mistakes.

He says : please don't shoot me for this
and he kissed me .

It's the kind of kiss that makes you realize oxygen is overrated.

All this has managed to prove is that you are extremely good at turning me off.

He looks at me with so much emotion I nearly crack in half.
God, Juliette --
And he's kissing me.
Once, twice, until I've had a taste and realize I'll never have enough.

He takes my hand. Intertwines our fingers. Offers me a smile that manages to kiss my heart.

The world is a mess and I want to laugh because all I can think is how horrible and beautiful it is, that our eyes blur the truth when we can't bear to see it.

We breathe when we're wrong, we breathe when we're right, we breathe even as we slip off the ledge toward an early grave. It cannot be undone. So I breathe.

We're too different now. We want different things. And this? I say nodding at our hands. All this managed to prove is that you are extremely good at turning me off.

He held you captive and managed to fall in love with you in the process.

Ah, Ms. Ferrars. I don't know what you hope to accomplish by sitting in the corner.

Hate looks like everybody else until it smiles. Until it spins around and lies with lips and teeth carved into semblance of something too passive to punch.

Truth is a jealous, vicious mistress that never, ever sleeps.

Damn, Kenji says after a moment. Damn damn damn. This shit is bananas.

The only existence I know now is the one I was given. An echo of what used to be.

Hate looks just like everybody else until it smiles. Until it spins around and lies with lips and teeth carved into the semblance of something too passive to punch.

Because a quiet night is not the same as a silent one, a firm man is not the same as a steady one, and a bright light is not the same as a brilliant one.

His smile is laced with dynamite.

There is a strange kind of freedom in giving up.

It is only in the desperate seconds before death that we realize the windows against which we broke our bodies were only mirrors, all along.

I turn to the glass wall keeping me from the other half of my heart. Press my head against the cool surface. Wish he would wake up.

Kenji-So the minute you opened your mouth you just shattered all his dreams, huh?

Juliette- I will push you off the roof.

Kenji-Yeah, I can definitely see why Adam wouldn't like you.

You want to keep your little brother alive? Make sure you don't kill yourself while you're trying to save him.

Hope is a pocket of possibility.

I'm holding it in my hand.

Sometimes I wonder if the planets are still up there, still aligned, still managing to get along after all this time. Maybe we could learn a thing or two from them.

Torture is not torture when there's any hope of relief.

It's like there are a million screams caught inside of my chest but I have to keep them all in because what's the point of screaming if you'll never be heard and no one will ever hear me in her. No one will ever hear me again.

How did I allow myself to imagine that a supernatural ability to kill things with my skin would suddenly grant me a comprehensive understanding of political science?

I'm an old creaky staircase when I wake up.

Ocean, azizam, she said, please tell Shirin she should stop swearing so much. It's always asshole this, bullshit that. I say to her, Shirin joon, why are you so obsessed with shit? Why everything is shit?

Doubt had married my fear and moved into my mind, where it built castles and ruled kingdoms and reigned over me, bowing my will to its whispers until I was little more than an acquiescing peon, too terrified to disobey, too terrified to disagree.

I lived in a really dark place. I wasn't safe in my own mind. I woke up every morning hoping to die and then spent the rest of the day wondering if maybe I was already dead because I couldn't even tell the difference.

We are synonyms but not the same.

If the decision you've made has brought you closer to humanity, then you've done the right thing.

My father couldn't warm my frozen hands.

I need to break down these self-made walls.

People can think whatever they like. I don't desire their validation.

My mind is a warehouse of carefully organized human emotions.

I lock away the things that do not serve me.

I want to tell her to stop, to leave, but parts of me are at war. I'm happy to have her close even if it hurts, even if it doesn't make any sense. But I can't seem to reach for her; I can't hold her like I've always wanted to.

I've never read anything that could speak directly to my bones.

1,320 seconds walk into the room before he does.

I don't want you to be repulsed by me.

My dreams are bloody and bleeding and blood is bleeding all over my mind and I can't sleep anymore.

I am suspended in the moment. Flickering images faded with age, frozen thoughts hovering precariously in dead space, a whirlwind of memories that slice through my soul.

Alice jumped from flagstone to flagstone, her face caught in the rainlight glow, her hand grasping for a touch of gold. The towns excitement was contagious, and the air was so thick with promise Alice could almost bite into it.

The afternoon our story begins, the quiet parts of being alive were the busiest: wind unlocking Windows; rainlight nudging curtains apart; fresh-cut grass tickling unsocked feet. Days like this made Alice want to set off on a great adventure.

His eyes are a midnight moment filled with memories, the only windows into my world.

I love you exactly as you are.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books.

Hope will break your heart all over again.

My stomach is a flimsy crepe, my heart a raging woodpecker, my blood a river of anxiety.

I've been stealing your soaps, I
tell him.

He raises his eyebrows at me.

Sorry. I feel myself blush.

Don't feel bad, he says, serious
so suddenly. You can have anything of
mine you want. You can have all of it.

He has dimples.
He's easily the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
And I wish I'd never seen it.

I have a curse.
I HAVE A GIFT.
I'm a monster.
I'M MORE THAN HUMAN.
My touch Is lethal.
MY TOUCH IS POWER.
I am their weapon.
I WILL FIGHT BACK.

I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

I hope he doesn't know he just touched my leg.

And nothing happened.

I'm wondering how many more mistakes I'll have to make before things finally fall into place. If they ever will.

I've come to believe that the most dangerous man in the world is the one who feels no remorse. The one who never apologizes and therefore seeks no forgiveness. Because in the end it is our emotions that make us weak, not our actions.

My words wear no parachutes as they fall out of my mouth.

Narrow-mindedness will only get you as far as Nowhere, and once you're there, you're lost forever.

And maybe if I can find a way to stop being scared, I'll actually figure out how to make friends. To be strong. To stop wallowing in my own problems.

It's not charity, I snap. He cares about me -- and I care about him!

Warner nods, unimpressed. You should get a dog, love. I hear they share much the same qualities.

Forgive me. I know it all seems stupid now, but I don't want to take anything for granted anymore. Forgive me for hurting you. Forgive me for not trusting you. I took my pain out on you and I'm so sorry. I was selfish, and I hurt you, and I'm so sorry.

- Ella.

This is, after all, what we're fighting for, isn't it?

A second chance at joy.

- Ella.

I love you, Ella. I will love you for the rest of my life. My heart is yours. Please don't ever give it back to me.

- Warner.

It's hot rain and humid days and broken thermostats. It's screaming and raging steam engines and wanting to take your clothes off just to feel a breeze. It's the kind of kiss that makes you realize oxygen is overrated.

Hope can make people do terrible things.

Studies have shown that thinking and wondering lead to thoughtful decision-making. It's an epidemic.

Time goes on even when we do not.

I can't be my own person if I constantly require someone else to hold me together.

They locked me up with a boy. A boy.
Dear God.
They're trying to kill me.

I've been locked up for 264 days.

1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven't spoken in 264 days of isolation.

6.336 hours since I've touched another human being.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters.

I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better, stronger. I want to be the bird that flies away.

Oliver felt much more than sorry for Alice. His heart had grown ten sizes since he'd met her, and the hours he'd lost her had nearly broken him.

And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose.

Sometimes a book isn't a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Sometimes it's the only story you know how to tell.

Right now I can't even control my own imagination as it grips my hair and drags me into the dark.

I have to get out of this room as soon as possible, or my own thoughts will wage war against me.

I begin to wonder if it's coincidence that the one person most unafraid to touch me is a monster himself.

But watching her talk to someone else made me crazy. I was jealous. Ridiculous. I wanted her to know me; I wanted her to talk to me. And I felt it then: this strange, inexplicable sense that she might be the only person in the world I could really care about.

I want to know how to convince you to design a smile just for me.

I was stupid. Careless.
But the truth is, I was distracted.
By her.

Juliette.
I can't control a nightmare, but in my waking moments her name is the only reminder I will permit myself.

I imagine this is what it feels like to fall apart.

Just because I'm going to hell doesn't mean you'll ever deserve her.

Words, will live as long as people can remember them.

I open the book and turn to the next page. Day three.

I started screaming today.

And those four words hit me harder than the worst kind of physical pain.