Tahereh Mafi Quotes & Sayings

I push the walls back, making more space in the room until I can finally breathe. Until I'm able to stand. — Tahereh Mafi

For a moment I feel as though I exist outside of my body, as if I'm looking at myself from his perspective. I see my face, my injured arm, these legs that suddenly seem unable to carry my weight. Cracks begin to form along my face, all the way down my arms, my torso, my legs.
I imagine this is what it's like to fall apart. — Tahereh Mafi

It's raining. The world is weeping at our feet in anticipation of what we're about to do. — Tahereh Mafi

The tilt of his head cracks gravity in half. — Tahereh Mafi

He looks up, so slowly, gold lashes lifting to reveal more sadness and beauty that I've ever seen in the same moment. I didn't know a person could convey so much with just one look. There's extraordinary pain in him. Extraordinary passion. — Tahereh Mafi

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

Kenji pulls up next to me. Nods at Warner. "So this gets you going, huh?"
I'm mortified.
Kenji barks out a laugh.
"I've never seen him in sweatpants before." I try to sound normal. "I've never even seen him in shorts."
Kenji raises an eyebrow at me. "I bet you've seen him in less."
I want to die. — Tahereh Mafi

My lips curve around the shape of his name. I'm surprised to discover how much I love the easy, familiar way the sound rolls off my tongue. — Tahereh Mafi

I don't know how to hate you anymore. Even though I want to and I know I should but I just can't." - Juliette — Tahereh Mafi

It's the kind of kiss that inspires stars to climb into the sky and light up the world. — Tahereh Mafi

Warner drops his hand. His glassy green eyes are so delighted I'm petrified.
"God, I've missed you," he says to me.
"You didn't actually think I'd let you go so easily? — Tahereh Mafi

Good God, I have taken leave of my senses. I never thank Delalieu. I've likely given the poor man a heart attack. — Tahereh Mafi

I'm starting to think that this situation is the exact antonym of excellent. — Tahereh Mafi

Hell is empty and all the devils are here. — Tahereh Mafi

There was something so unreal about her, sitting there. I couldn't even see her face; couldn't discern the outline of her figure. Even then she fascinated me. That she could seem so calm, so still. She would sit in one place for hours at a time, unmoving, and I always wondered where she was in her mind, what she might be thinking, how she could possibly exist in that solitary world. More than anything else, I wanted to hear her speak.
I was desperate to hear her voice. — Tahereh Mafi

... shit happens. We deal with it, and we find a way to survive. You're not the only one with the problems. — Tahereh Mafi

Try again," he says slowly. "Stay calm. Have faith in yourself. If you don't believe you can do it," he says, "you won't. — Tahereh Mafi

Hate looks like everybody else until it smiles — Tahereh Mafi

Let go of me, I scream, but, oh, only in my imagination because my lips are finished working and my heart has just expired and my mind has gone to hell for the day and my eyes my eyes I think they're bleeding ... — Tahereh Mafi

Sometimes I wish I could step outside of myself for a while. I want to leave this worn body behind, but my chains are too many, my weights too heavy. — Tahereh Mafi

I want you to live up to your potential!"
"Let me go," I say quietly. I don't want to be your creature. I don't want to hurt people."
"The world has already hurt you," he counters. "The world put you here. You're here because of them! You think if you leave they're going to accept you? You think you can run away and live a normal life? No one will care for you.
No one will come near you-You'll be an outcast like you've always been! Nothing has changed! You belong with me! — Tahereh Mafi

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. — Tahereh Mafi

I've tripped over a planet and I don't know anything anymore, I don't know anything because nothing will ever be able to compare to this. — Tahereh Mafi

Maybe we both fell in love with the illusion of something more — Tahereh Mafi

I am no longer afraid of fear, and I will not let it rule me.
Fear will learn to fear me. — Tahereh Mafi

Juliette, he says, and he mouths the name, barely speaking at all, and he's pouring molten lava into my limbs and I never even knew I could melt straight to death. — Tahereh Mafi

The possibility of losing him is 100 years of solitude I don't want to imagine. — Tahereh Mafi

I want this up and I want these down — Tahereh Mafi

I don't think you're crazy." The world is blurring away as I watch it through the window. "And I don't think that you're a psychopath. I also don't think you're a sick, twisted monster. I don't think that you're a heartless murderer, and I don't think you deserve to die, and I don't think you're pathetic. Or stupid. Or a coward. I don't think you're any of the things people have said about you. — Tahereh Mafi

This must be how I broke through the concrete in Warner's torture chamber. Which means I still have no idea how I broke through the concrete in Warner's torture chamber. — Tahereh Mafi

I'm always apologizing. forever apologizing. for who i am and what i never meant to be and for this body i was born into, this DNA i never asked for, this person i can't unbecome. — Tahereh Mafi

The wind is singing outside my window but it's high-pitched and off-key and I don't have the heart to tell it to stop. — Tahereh Mafi

OH MY GOD. Yes. YES. You are exactly like that. Holy shit, yes." Beautiful — Tahereh Mafi

Tell me there's a chance you could be wrong.
"If there were the slightest chance i could spare you from the pain, I would taken."
And its this-his sincerity-that finally snaps me in half. Because the truth is so unbearable I wish he'd spare me a lie. — Tahereh Mafi

My eyes open to 2 eyes 2 lips 2 ears 2 eyebrows. I stifle my scream my urgency to run the crippling horror gripping my limbs. "You're a b-b-b-b - ""And you're a girl. — Tahereh Mafi

Gone is the boy with the guns and the skeletons in his closet. These hands holding me have never held a weapon. These hands have never touched death. These hands are perfect and kind and tender. — Tahereh Mafi

On the darkest days you have to search for a spot of brightness, on the coldest days you have to seek out a spot of warmth; on the bleakest days you have to keep your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give them a chance to wash out the pain in order to see fresh and clear once again. — Tahereh Mafi

I want you, I want all of you. I want you inside and out and catching your breath and aching for me like I ache for you. — Tahereh Mafi

It's to hard to be kind to the world when all you've ever felt is hate. — Tahereh Mafi

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

Light a candle for me, I used to whisper to no one.
Someone
Anyone
If you're out there
Please tell me you can feel this fire. — Tahereh Mafi

All this for a kiss. — Tahereh Mafi

How strange that we can go from friends to inseparable to hateful then casual all in one lifetime. — Tahereh Mafi

Dear, sweet, beautiful girl, — Tahereh Mafi

I know who I am" he says, " that's enough for me" -Warner- — Tahereh Mafi

So you're exactly like a Venus flytrap. You reel 'em in. Clamp 'em down. Eat 'em up." I didn't respond. "Mmmmm," he said. "You're like a sexy super scary plant." I close my eyes. Covered my mouth in horror. "Why is that so wrong?" he said then bent down to meet my gaze. Tugged on a lock of my hair to get me to look up. "Why does this have to be so horrible? Why can't you see how awesome this is? — Tahereh Mafi

I love you exactly as you are. — Tahereh Mafi

Hope in this world bleeds out of the barrel of a gun. — Tahereh Mafi

This pen is my only outlet, my only voice, because I have no one else to speak to, no mind but my own to drown in and all the lifeboats are taken and all the life preservers are broken and I don't know how to swim I can't swim I can't swim and it's getting so hard. It's getting so hard. 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 here. No one will ever hear me again. — Tahereh Mafi

I'm beginning to think of hope as a dangerous, terrifying thing. — Tahereh Mafi

Love will set her free. — Tahereh Mafi

His eyes are two buckets of rainwater: deep, fresh, clear. Hurt. — Tahereh Mafi

I've never been able to follow through. — Tahereh Mafi

I wonder at my incapacity for easy banter, smooth conversation, empty words to fill awkward moments. I don't have a closet filled with umms and ellipses ready to insert at the beginnings and ends of sentences. I don't know how to be a verb, an adverb, any kind of modifier. I'm a noun through and through. — Tahereh Mafi

Someone picked up the sun and pinned it to the sky again, but every day it hangs a little lower than the day before. It's like a negligent parent who only knows one half of who you are. It never sees how its absence changes people. How different we are in the dark. — Tahereh Mafi

Sir, can you hear me?" Another cry. But this time, a voice I don't detest.
"Sire, please, can you hear me-"
"I've been shot, Delalieu," I manage to say. I open my eyes. Look into his watery ones. "I haven't gone deaf. — Tahereh Mafi

We are hours and minutes reaching for the same second, holding hands as we spin forward into new days and the promise of something better. — Tahereh Mafi

I want your mind. Your strength. I want to be worth your time. — Tahereh Mafi

We can really be together," he says to me, undeterred by my silence. He pulls me close, too close. I'm frozen in five hundred layers of fear. Stunned in grief, in disbelief.
His hands reach for my face, his lips for mine. My brain is on fire, ready to explode from the impossibility of this moment. I feel like I'm watching it happen, detached from my own body, incapable of intervening. More than anything else, I'm shocked by his gentle hands, his earnest eyes.
"I want you to choose me," he says. "I want you to choose to be with me. I want you to want this. — Tahereh Mafi

Life is a bleak place. Sometimes you have to learn how to shoot first. — Tahereh Mafi

The sky is raining bricks right into my skull. — Tahereh Mafi

It's never a good idea to believe everything you hear. — Tahereh Mafi

Having a cellmate might be okay. Talking to a real human being might make things easier. I practice using my voice, shaping my lips around the familiar words unfamiliar to my mouth. I practice all day. I'm surprised I remember how to speak. — Tahereh Mafi

Hope is a pocket of possibility. — Tahereh Mafi

The warm water makes me feel weightless. It carries my burdens for me, understanding that I need a moment to relieve my shoulders of this weight. To close my eyes and relax. — Tahereh Mafi

I bite back a shiver as the blood rushes up to blush my cheeks and for a moment, just for this moment, I drop my bones and allow him to hold me together. — Tahereh Mafi

But the moments the seconds the minutes the hours the days and years become one big mistake, one extraordinary opportunity slipped right through our fingers because we couldn't decide, we couldn't understand, we needed more time, we didn't know what to do.
We don't even know what we have done. — Tahereh Mafi

It's 2 lines. Font like a typewriter inked across the very bottom of his torso.
hell is empty
and all the devils are here
Yes. Interesting. Yes. Sure. I think I need to lie down. "Books," he's saying, pulling his boxer-briefs up and rezipping his pants, "are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them. Tattoos, for example, are very hard to forget. — Tahereh Mafi

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. — Tahereh Mafi

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

I know exactly what my future looks like and I'm okay with it. I'm happy to live in solitude. I'm not afraid of spending the rest of my life in the company of my own person. I do not afraid loneliness. — Tahereh Mafi

We're drenched in water and beauty and the exhilaration of a moment I never knew was possible. — Tahereh Mafi

Laughter comes from living. — Tahereh Mafi

Loneliness is a bitter, wretched companion. sometimes it just won't let go. — Tahereh Mafi

It's that terrible moment when you're sitting still so still so still because you don't want them to see you cry you don't want to cry but your lips won't stop trembling and your eyes are filled to the brim with please and I beg you and please and I'm sorry and please and have mercy and maybe this time it'll be different but it's always the same. There's no one to run to for comfort. No one on your side. — Tahereh Mafi

I loved making you mad," he says to me, his eyes wicked. "I love making you mad. — Tahereh Mafi

Something in my patience snaps.. 'I'd really rather die than eat your food food and hear you call me 'love'... He holds my gaze for a few infinitely long seconds before he pulls a gun out of jis jacket pocket, He fires. — Tahereh Mafi

I have a heart.", says Science."But I'm a monster", says society. — Tahereh Mafi

The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It's always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do. — Tahereh Mafi

I've fallen for her ... So hard. I've hit the ground. Gone right through it. Never in my life have if felt this. Nothing like this ... I've known nothing like this terrible, horrible, paralyzing feeling. I feel crippled. Desperate and out of control. And it keeps getting worse. Every day I feel sick. Empty and somehow aching. Love is a heartless bastard. I'm driving myself insane. — Tahereh Mafi

I don't consider myself a moral man. I do not philosophize about life or bother with laws and principles that govern most people. I do not pretend to know the difference between right and wrong. But I do live by a certain kind of code. And somethimes, I think, you have how to shoot first. — Tahereh Mafi

I am a spectacle, an anomaly even among the anomalies. — Tahereh Mafi

My mind is a maze of impossibility. — Tahereh Mafi

I wish someone would remind me how to breathe. — Tahereh Mafi

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. — 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. So I breathe. — Tahereh Mafi

We are synonyms but not the same.
Synonyms know each other like old colleagues, like a set of friends who've seen the world together. They swap stories, reminisce about their origins and forget that though they are similar, they are entirely different, and though they share a certain set of attributes, one can never be the other. 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 because the way they wedge themselves into a sentence changes everything.
They are not the same. — Tahereh Mafi

My heart is pounding so hard I'm surprised it's not bleeding. — Tahereh Mafi

Impossible is such a stupid word. — Tahereh Mafi

And I promise myself then, in that moment, that I will hold him forever, just like this, until all the pain and torture and suffering is gone, until he's given a chance to live the kind of life where no one can wound him this deeply ever again.
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.
It's time, I think, to break free. — Tahereh Mafi

I'm so sorry," she says, and she's wringing her hands, looking away from me. "I'm so, so sorry."
I notice what she's wearing.
It's a dark-green dress with fitted sleeves; a simple cut made of stretch cotton that clings to the soft curves of her figure. It complements the flecks of green in her eyes in a way I couldn't have anticipated. It's one of the many dresses I chose for her. I thought she might enjoy having something nice after being caged as an animal for so long. And I can't quite explain it, but it gives me a strange sense of pride to see her wearing something I picked out myself.
"I'm sorry," she says for the third time.
I'm again struck by how impossible it is that she's here. In my bedroom. Staring at me without my shirt on. Her hair is so long it falls to the middle of her back; I have to clench my fists against this unbidden need to run my hands through it. She's so beautiful. — Tahereh Mafi

The tattoo is just setting below his hp bone.
H e l l i s e m p t y
a n d a l l t h e d e v i l s a r e h e r e
I kiss my way across the words.
Kissing away the devils.
Kissing away the pain. — Tahereh Mafi

Because what's the point of screaming ifor you'll never be heard — Tahereh Mafi

My opinions," I say to him, quietly this time, "should not so easily break your own. Stand by your convictions. Form clear and logical arguments. Even if I disagree. — Tahereh Mafi

Maybe warner was right all along, maybe he and i were perfect for each other. — Tahereh Mafi

Stop crying. Stop sitting in the dark counting out all your individual feelings about how sad and lonely you are. Wake up ( ... ) You're not the only person in this world who doesn't want to get out of bed in the morning ( ... ) You can be whoever the hell you want to be now ( ... ) So make a choice. Make a choice and stop wasting everyone's time. Stop eating your own time. Okay? — Tahereh Mafi

We're here, and it's nighttime. So according to my calculations, we must not have done anything stupid. — Tahereh Mafi

My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, — Tahereh Mafi

I want to scream, sometimes, I want to collapse, sometimes, I want to die knowing that I've known what it was like to live with this kiss, this heart, this soft soft explosion that makes me feel like I've taken a sip of the sun ... — Tahereh Mafi

You will not be alone, I say to them, spinning to see their faces. You don't need to be afraid anymore. We want to take back our world. We want to save the lives of our family members, our friends. We want your children to have a chance at a better future. And we want to fight. We want to win. I lock eyes with them. And we are asking for your help. — Tahereh Mafi