Top 100 Ruta Sepetys Quotes
#1. There's a saying, 'Death hath a thousand doors to let out life; I shall find one.' But the children. That's what I struggle with.' He shook his head. 'Why the children?
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#2. My sister and brother are both writers as well. We are constantly discussing story and plot lines. And I love to discuss story ideas with my husband.
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#3. Mrs. Rimas cried at the mention of the wafer and the traditional Christmas blessing. God grant that we are all together again next year.
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#4. Yet amidst all that, life has spit in the eye of death.
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#6. Mother wrapped her arms around Jonas, kissing his hair.
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#7. Willie appeared completely calm about the news of Mother. She always said she could make tea in a tornado.
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#8. Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.
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#9. We pushed to the edge of recklessness, yet I felt safe.
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#10. A wrongdoing doesn't give us the right to do wrong.
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#12. How did I get here How did I end up in the arms of a boy I barely knew but knew I didn't want to lose I wondered what I would have thought of Andrius in Lithuania. Would I have liked him Would he have liked me
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#13. What was life asking of me? How could I respond when I didn't know the question?
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#14. You got to get outta here, Josie. New Orleans is fine for some people, real good for a few. But not for you. Too much baggage that'll pull you down. You got dreams and the potential to make 'em real.
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#15. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be taken by anybody else, these pages must be shown.
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#16. That's a good hustle," I told him.
"We both got a little hustle, don't we?" He pulled on his jacket. "But I like to think we got more heart.
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#18. Evil will rule until good men or women choose to act.
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#19. It grey louder. Louder. They were singing, singing at the top of their lungs. Andrius joined, and then my brother and the gray-haired man. And finally, the bald man joined in, singing out national anthem. 'Lithuania, land of heroes...
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#20. What was creepier, a man who loved clip-on ties or a girl who kept a log of fantasy fathers hidden in her desk drawer?
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#21. My arm began moving, turning the invisible crank of Death's music box. Somewhere inside, I didn't want the melody to end.
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#22. I looked down at the little pink face in the bundle. A newborn. The child had been alive only minutes but was already considered a criminal by the Soviets.
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#23. What if this is a horrible mistake?" I croaked.
"Oh, it'll be horrible fine, just a bunch of pretentious rich people with shelves of expensive books they've never read.
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#24. That doesn't make him a hero. Our country is doomed, don't you see? Our fate is death, no matter whose hands we fall into.
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#25. We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean.
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#26. Engrave your pieces, Jo, and they'll always find their way back to you, said Willie.
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#28. Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit, you don't know how to dance, do you, Josephine? I didn't know how to dance. I didn't want anything to do with his biscuit.
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#29. What had human beings become? Did war make us evil or just activate an evil already lurking within us?
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#30. I didn't need his criticism. I carried enough guilt on my own. I had done everything wrong. I had the highest marks in school but couldn't master common sense.
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#31. I had said too much. He was giving me the look. I hated the look. It was the "You've had it tough, huh, kid?" look. It made me feel pathetic.
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#32. Everyone has a price," she said.
"But clearly not everyone has a soul,
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#33. It was hard to imagine that war raged somewhere in Europe. We had a war of our own, waiting for the NKVD to choose the next victim, to throw us in the next hole.
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#34. I felt as if I were riding a pendulum. Just as I would swing into the abyss of hopelessness, the pendulum would swing back with some small goodness.
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#35. Enough studying, Joana. Sometimes living life is more instructive than studying it.
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#36. It's safer for you to stay with the others,' he said.
Safer? He didn't realize.
I was already dead.
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#37. We were not Germanizable. But our soil was." Emilia p11
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#38. You love stories, Emilia. Well, the trees hold hundreds of years of stories. Think of it, everything these trees have seen and felt. All of the secrets are inside of them.
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#39. Did war make us evil or just activate an evil already lurking within us? The
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#40. I shut the bathroom door and caught sight of my face in the mirror. I had no idea how quickly it was to change, to fade. If I had, I would have stared at my reflection, memorizing it. It was the last time I would look into a real mirror for more than a decade.
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#41. Abandoned or separated from their families, they were forced to battle the beast of war on their own, left with an inheritance of heartache and resposibility for events they had no rile in causing.
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#42. I became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.
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#43. Jesse motioned to my hair. "Looks like you've been in the bath yourself." He settled into a chair on the front porch.
"I had just washed my hair, but then I had to go shoot someone. Do you want a cold drink?
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#44. Do you see, my dear? The proverbs are at play. 'I wept because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.'" I
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#45. Thieves and prostitutes. Our mothers were in that car, along with a teacher, a librarian, elderly people, and a newborn baby - thieves and prostitutes.
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#46. You stand for what is right, Lina, without the expectation of gratitude or reward.
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#47. Unless it was Cokie, gifts from men weren't free.
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#48. The German stared at me, a combination of fatigue and frustration. But I understood.
His eyes on the potato said, Emilia, I'm hungry.
The dried blood on his shirt said, Emilia, I'm injured.
But the way he clutched his pack told me the most.
Emilia, don't touch this.
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#49. The recruit was screaming. Veins bulged in his neck. His mouth contorted as he summoned all of his strength to roar one, single word. Joana.
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#50. Be in control of your piece, Jo. The minute it takes control of you, you're dead, Willie would tell me.
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#51. Well, I don't know, Lina. But let's just say I've met a lot of dead people.
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#52. War had rearranged my priorities. I now clung to memories more than goals or material things. But there were a few irreplaceable items that buoyed my spirit and fight for life. It was at that moment that I realized. Something was missing from my suitcase.
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#53. Writers of historical fiction would be lost without libraries and archives.
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#54. He wrapped his arms around me and planted a kiss straight on my lips, hard and long. It felt like I was watching the kiss instead of being inside of it.
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#55. She held her breath in one hand and her suitcase in the other.
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#56. Ships capacity: 1,463
Passengers on board: 10,573
Lifeboats: 22
But then I remembered.
Ten of the lifeboats were missing
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#57. But unlike Mama, I would not go to heaven. My secrets padlocked the gates. I'd be a torn kite stuck in the dead branches of a tree, unable to fly.
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#58. Did you ever wonder what a human life is worth?
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#59. What did I want? I wanted the war to be over so I could ask her out.
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#60. I watched from the raft as the beautiful deep began to swallow the massive boat of steel.
In one large gulp." Emilia p341
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#61. I was a marionette. He loved pulling the strings.
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#62. She is you, she is your mother, your father, your country. She is Poland.
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#63. The truck stopped in front of the hospital. Everyone seemed relieved that they would tend to the bald man's injuries. But they did not. They were waiting. A woman who was also on the list was giving birth to a baby. As soon as the umbilical cord was cut, they would both be thrown into the truck.
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#64. Those memories, they are the coals that shield my heart from frost.
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#65. You'll have champagne. All girls like champagne.
All girls didn't like champagne. I preferred root beer. Willie preferred anything that smelled like gasoline and burned her throat. She could hold her liquor better than any man, and I wished she was there to help me navigate John Lockwell.
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#66. He wanted to know something about me. I leaned over and put my mouth to his ear. It was barely a whisper.
'I'm a murderer.
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#67. The sinking of the Gustloff is the largest maritime disaster, yet the world still knows nothing of it. I often wonder, will that ever change or will it remain just another secret swallowed by war? You
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#68. A wrongdoing doesn't give us the rifht to do wrong.
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#69. Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.
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#70. Your daughter, your sister. She is salt to the sea,
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#71. Killers aren't always assassins. Sometimes, they don't even have blood on their hands.
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#72. The words tasted sour. I agreed with Patrick. In New Orleans, sometimes death did feel more like socializing. And he knew better than anyone else. He frequented postmortem parties daily, trolling for books.
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#73. But I had learned to read very young. They could never take that away from me.
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#74. Hope, like oxygen, is what kept her going.
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#75. Man, you're a regular Bonnie Parker."
"A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up."
Jesse found that hysterical. "Did Willie say that?"
"Nope, Mae West. Now, how do I get on this thing in a skirt?
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#76. My biggest fear was that the old Charlie was in there somewhere trying to communicate, but a synaptic disconnect made his behavior erratic.
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#77. Shelves without books were lonely and just plain wrong.
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#78. the poet Emerson said that when we have worn out our shoes, the strength of the journey has passed into our body.
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#79. I knew the legends of the birds. Seagulls were the souls of dead soldiers. Owls were the souls of women. Doves were the recently departed souls of unmarried girls.
Was there a bird for the souls of people like me?
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#80. The scent of Havana tobacco draped thick from the magnolia trees in the front yard. Ice cubes mingled and clinked against the sides of crystal tumblers. Patrick said hello to a group of men sitting on the veranda. I heard the pop of a champagne cork and laughter from inside.
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#81. Perhaps tomorrow I would actually put pen to paper.
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#82. This town will eat you up if you're not careful. But I won't be here forever.
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#83. The brutality was shocking. Disgraceful acts of inhumanity. No one wanted to fall into the hands of the enemy. But it was growing harder to distinguish who the enemy was.
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#85. I wasn't certain of anything anymore, except that New Orleans was a faithless friend and I wanted to leave her.
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#86. I managed to escape the NKVD while sitting right in front of them.
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#87. I wanted to stay locked away from the pain and destruction. I didn't want to be strong. I didn't want to be the 'smart girl'. I was so very tired. I just wanted it all to be over.
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#88. Look at you, locked and loaded, like Mae West of the Motor City.
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#89. David Arnold's writing is both heartfelt and hilarious. You will fall in love with Mim, even as her grand journey will keep you guessing. Mosquitoland reminds us that sometimes imperfect is just perfect.
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#90. Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived?
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#91. She must have been a nurse. She looked a few years older than me. Pretty. Naturally pretty, the type that's still attractive, even more so, when she's filthy.
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#92. War had bled color from everything, leaving nothing but a storm of gray.
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#93. The lie came out so easily it frightened me. I used to feel sick to my stomach when I heard Mother tell a lie. How can you do it? How do you live with yourself? I used to wonder. But here I was, lying to Miss Paulsen and smiling while doing it.
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#94. For some reason, my hair always looked best right before bed, and what good was that?
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#95. New Orleans is unlike any city in America. Its cultural diversity is woven into the food, the music, the architecture - even the local superstitions. It's a sensory experience on all levels and there's a story lurking around every corner.
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#96. It belongs to an Uptown attorney. What a horse's ass. Thinks he's so smart. He doesn't know the difference between piss and perfume. I'll have fun returning that to him. Maybe I'll drop by his house at dinnertime.
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#97. They got everything money can buy, their bank accounts are fat, but they ain't happy. They ain't ever gonna be happy. You know why? They soul broke. And money can't fix that, no sir.
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#98. Guilt is a hunter.
Fate is a hunter.
Shame is a hunter.
Fear is a hunter.
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#99. Charlie Marlowe never wrote horror, but somehow horror was writing Charlie Marlowe.
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#100. I don't want to see no dead body. Willie ain't in there. She put her walkin' shoes on. She gone to see the Lord.
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