Tammy’s Top Ten Favorite Quotes from Books

It’s Top Ten Tuesday over at The Broke and the Bookish! This week we’re listing favorite/inspiring quotes from books. Luckily, I usually include a favorite quote from every book I review, so coming up with this list wasn’t too difficult (maybe I should say it was too easy!) I wouldn’t call these inspiring, necessarily, but they’re all beautifully written, and it’s no coincidence that many of these are from my favorite books. It just wasn’t possible to trim this down to ten quotes, so please enjoy these fifteen twenty twenty-one favorite quotes of mine (in no particular order):

When you set out to find the answers to your questions, you have to be prepared to be surprised by what you discover.  – Nightbird by Alice Hoffman

If you can’t be honest with your best friend’s Vampire Boyfriend, who can you be honest with?  – Get In Trouble by Kelly Link

“Maybe next time? I’ll bring my shotgun. It’s got a taste for the blood of monstrous men.”  – Atlanta Burns by Chuck Wendig

In the end, forgiveness is like letting go of a rabid cougar you had by the tail.  – Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

I took the gun out, a familiar .38 purchased at our local Super Wal-Mart. At first, I kept it under the middle couch cushion and didn’t bring it out for weeks at a time. I’ve since warmed up to the prospect of holding it, watching the light die in the matte finish of the barrel. When you fondle a gun, it starts out cool and warms up, getting friendly in your hands. Hold one long enough and pretty soon, the urge to shoot something takes on a life of its own. – The Heart Does Not Grow Back by Fred Venturini

But first there’s this moment, this lamp-lit room: Miranda sits on the floor beside Elizabeth, whose breath is heavy with wine, and she leans back until she feels the reassuring solidity of the door frame against her spine. Elizabeth, who is crying a little, bites her lip and together they look at the sketches and paintings pinned to every wall. The dog stands at attention and stares at the window, where just now a moth brushed up against the glass, and for a moment everything is still. Station Eleven is all around them.  – Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

“It’s true, you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl.”  – The Martian by Andy Weir

What she thinks is: this could have been me. Why not? A real girl, in a real house, with a mother and a father and a brother and a sister and an aunt and an uncle and a nephew and a niece and a cousin and all those other words for the map of people who love each other and stay together. The map called family.  – The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

When you find yourself tied up in the chem lab supply closet, surrounded by jars of formaldehyde, about to be maimed by a microscope-wielding thug, it’s a pretty good indication that something in your life has gone wrong. – High & Dry by Sarah Skilton

He stopped in the center of the market square, stepping up on a small fountain. “Perhaps I should introduce myself,” he called. People stopped to look at him. He were wrapped in violence as if it were clothes, his cloak like death, his armor like blades. His hair were shaggy as an animal’s and it looked like the Devil were trapped in his head. –  Scarlet by A.C. Gaugin

A person shouldn’t talk too much, Ella realized. With writing, you could construct a whole world, but talking too much could demolish it. – The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen

You were free with your body, but your heart you guarded like pirate’s treasure, locked tight behind a thousand closed doors. – The Last Vampire by J.T. Geissinger

Persimmon Gaunt was even paler, but she was near to bursting with a barbarian baby-to-come. Her frame spoke of action and theft and generosity and narrow escapes. Her eyes spoke of tombs and flowers and elegies and inevitable decay. Her voice spoke of all these things and the glimmer of a silver thread that bound them. –  The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich

So Helen remained and discovered in her sister’s absence what love and the loss of it is; she discovered both at the exact same time. It’s not just a feeling; it’s a real thing inside of you made of a paper-thin glass, and when it breaks the shards move through your blood and cut you to pieces. –  The Kings and Queens of Roam by Daniel Wallace

The wind was a lonely, howling voice between teeth of stone, a thread-bare wail singing of death and the hunger of wolves. In it, he could hear the voices of his dying brothers. In her eyes, he could see an ending. The ending of all things. And he was afraid. –  Kinslayer by Jay Kristoff

All the secrets in the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight. – Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

She pulled away enough to hold him with her cold blue eyes. He could see the devil in them, silver-tongued and cunning, and Eli thought, not for the first time, that he should have killed her when he had the chance. – Vicious by V.E. Schwab

The school devours privacy, and rumors are like drops of blood in an ocean full of predators. – Charm & Strange by Stephanie Kuehn

There he is. The Boss. Looking small and crumpled. Like an origami tiger on the seat that somebody sat on without realizing. – The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig

They went into his room and she climbed backwards onto his bed, the bed he never slept in because he did not need to sleep, and pulled him on top of her. She took off his shirt, kissed his pale, hairless chest. He had no heartbeat but she could hear something spinning inside of him. She was entranced by it. Like white noise, like the recorded sound of stars. – The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke

The knives hummed from her hand like angry hornets, straight toward her daughter’s heart. –  The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher

So, which of these is your favorite?