Martine Leavitt Quotes

The girl longed for a love that could not be ended by death. From the time she was young, she knew that her true love was there, somewhere, living a life that would one day intersect her own. Knowing this made every day full of sweet possibility. Knowing that her true love lived and breathed and went about his day under her same sun made her fears vanish, her sorrows small, and her hopes high. Though she did not yet know his face, the color of his eyes, still she knew him better than anyone else knew him, knew his hopes and dreams, what made him laugh and cry.

The girl knew that quarrels would come because their lives were intertwined - how passionately one defends a heart that is vulnerable.

I have observed that you treat a man as an old garment to be taken apart and stitched again. Perhaps you could think of him as good cloth, rich fabric that wants only to be embroidered upon. And perhaps, if you will do that, you will see that you love Tailor yourself.

It is life that hurts you not death.

My lord, why do you trouble me by walking with me in the dark? It is cruel."
"I think to protect you from them," he said.

And I mean, if there is a God it's probably a good idea to believe in him. But if there isn't a God, then we're just an accident of nature, a virus, pond scum gone berserk, and it won't matter one way or another if I believe or not because who cares?
And so if it doesn't matter, then I choose to believe. There's something mindful about it, about the universe having a heart, us being watched over, maybe life and everything meaning something.

Susie: Maybe we're all making everything up as we go.

And so he did his endless work,' I continued quietly, 'without feeling, without pity, without rest, for to open his heart to these would be to open his heart to his loneliness and longing and that was beyond bearing.

Me: Now I understand why a guy can give up his freedom and shackle himself to one girl and spend the rest of his life working at a job he hates just to support the girl's offspring and then he dies, the end.

Susie: Yeah, and now I understand why a girl can give up her freedom and shackle herself to one guy and ruin her body giving birth to the guy's offspring and put her career on hold and not realize her dreams of travel so she can cook and clean and raise the offspring of the guy and then she dies, the end.

She learned that there is a cruelty in the world. She did not yet understand that those who hurt others do so because they believe that people desire to hurt them. She did not know yet that such people suffer more than the ones they hurt, for they must live in their own skin, in a world of their own making, a world full of enemies.

Reality is just this game people play together, something their brain decides on, and the minute their brain gets iffy about reality, they realize everything they know about the world is just their own made-up version of it, and that would mean everyone is walking around in their own made-up world, all alone, and reality is just something we invent together to make us feel not so alone. It scares people when some of us check out of the game.

When it is winter and we must walk in the blizzard snow do not our fingers and toes whisper death And when winter is at last over ... can we not hear our bellies whisper death to us In the dark don't we know And when we are paralyzed by nightmares We know what you are. With our first cries we rail against you. We see you in every drop of blood in every tear.

If untimely death came only those who deserved that fate, Keturah, where would choice be? No one would do good for its own sake, but only to avoid an early demise. No one would speak out against evil because of his own courageous soul, but only to live another day. The right to choose is man's great gift, but one thing is not his to choose
the time and means of death.

I've figured out there's a difference between the meaning of the word 'real' and the meaning of the word 'true.

Anything could happen in a cosmos that was part math and part magic.

His [Death] voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty.

These are the best reasons to do anything in life. People who say things like this are the kind of people who change the world. Who prevent the world from ending. Or at least they can change the inner world of a reader and that is a sacred power.

Everyone stared at her, sorry for her but glad it had not happened to them. There were a few murmurs of sympathy, and a few people whispering all the reasons they thought Vilsa may have deserved what had happened. It is important to make people deserve what happens to them. If bad things can happen for no apparent reason, then bad things might happen to innocent us.

There are some who come willingly," I said, as if I had not heard him, "not out of love, but out of sickness and sadness and a lack of understanding. He wanted none of them. And so he waited without waiting, and dreamed of what he could not imagine, and performed his terrible work and lived only in the moments out of which eternity is spun, knowing it was hopeless.

We mean you don't love any men," Gretta said in her even, matter-of-fact voice.
"You know very well that I adore all men," I said. "I have always thought them to be the dearest of things.

I was halfway between my home and the cookhouse when a mist of cloud began to creep across the early-risen moon. It darkened the ground enough that I did not see a small depression, and I stumbled. Immedietly I was steadied by some force I could not see, and then, as if the coming night clotted into a visible personage, I perceived that Lord Death was beside me.

How thin the air felt at the forest's edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm ... The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting ... How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish when I ended, to understand that it was not I who had invented the moon the first time I realized how lovely it was. To admit that it was not my breath that made the winds blow ... [M]y heart, my heart knew that when I closed my eyes I invented the night sky and the stars too. Wasn't the whole dome of the sky the same shape as the inside of my skull? Didn't I create the sun and the day when I raised my eyelids every morning?

Just because you see something doesn't mean it's really there.

Death is the ending of all true stories.

Had I truly thought I would not die when he kissed me? But I did. For a moment the breath and life went out of me and there was no time and no tomorrow but only my lips against his.

Tell me what it is like to die," I answered.
He dismounted from his horse, looking at me strangely the whole while. "You experience something similar every day," he said softly. "It is as familiar to you as bread and butter."
"Yes," I said. "It is like every night when I fall asleep."
"No. It is like every morning when you wake up.

Susie: Okay, Calvin. But you know what? You can't say, youcan'texpectanythingfrommeI'mbroken! And turn around the next minute and say, ohwoeismeeverybodytreatsmelikeI'mbroken! Which one is it? I can treat you the way I really feel, or I can treat you careful.
Me: Real. Just be real.

Papa loves you with a dying and infernal love," the youngest girl said.
"Undying," the eldest girl corrected. "And eternal.

Susie: Doesn't it make you feel kind of awesome that the world is beautiful for no other apparent reason than that it is? Like beauty has its own secret reason. It doesn't need human eyes to notice. It just wants to be glorious and unbelievable.