Top 70 Paula Stokes Quotes

1. “To me, Mother Nature isn’t nearly as scary as human nature.”

— Paula Stokes

2. “I like helping people. Especially people who deserve it.”

— Paula Stokes

3. “When you care about someone, you can’t just turn that off because you learn they betrayed you.”

— Paula Stokes

4. “You have more power than you think. Be careful what you do with it.”

— Paula Stokes

5. “Time doesn’t heal anything. It’s like drinking. The best it can do is help you forget, if you’re lucky.”

— Paula Stokes

6. “Accidentally hurting yourself is way better than hurting other people.”

— Paula Stokes

7. “But the truth is, pretending something didn’t happen doesn’t make it less real. it just makes ‘me’ less real.”

— Paula Stokes

8. “Monsters don’t get happy endings.”

— Paula Stokes

9. “It sucks that it takes losing something important to make some people realize they need to change, but unfortunately that’s how it is.”

— Paula Stokes

10. “There’s nothing abnormal about loneliness.”

— Paula Stokes

11. “What so many people don’t understand is that the reason some of us do things that seem impossibly hard to others is because we don’t have a choice.”

— Paula Stokes

12. “I go back for seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths, when it’s good. Just not if it means some guy gets to put a leash on me.”

— Paula Stokes

13. “The truth doesn’t get you very far on the streets, or in a group home, or even in high school. That’s probably why the idea of Liars, Inc. appealed to me. Everybody lies. You might as well get paid for it.”

— Paula Stokes

14. “Sometimes unintentionally cruel is the worst cruel of all.”

— Paula Stokes

15. “But my history isn’t something I should hide from or be ashamed of. Everyone has dealt with things in their past. It’s not our struggles that make us who we are, it’s how we respond to them.”

— Paula Stokes

16. “The world is full of holes and uneven seams, wrinkled places that you can’t make smooth, no matter how hard you try.”

— Paula Stokes

17. “Some people think they can just decree that everything will be fine. The world doesn’t work like that. I’m not sure the world gives a crap about anyone’s promises, well-meaning or otherwise. Sometimes the Universe just takes what it wants.”

— Paula Stokes

18. “Turning off the lights is like opening a doorway in my mind.”

— Paula Stokes

19. “We can’t define people by their worst actions.”

— Paula Stokes

20. “Never depend completely on other people, but take help when you need it, and give help when you can.”

— Paula Stokes

21. “People are always clinging to what they want to hear, discarding the evidence that doesn’t fit with their beliefs, giving greater weight to evidence that does.”

— Paula Stokes

22. “Standing up for yourself is about more than flinging barbed-wire insults around. Its about picking your battles, knowing when to fight, knowing exactly what and who is worth fighting for.”

— Paula Stokes

23. “Seoul is a city of layers and Jesse peels them back with his penetrating gaze, taking in the glitzy Western bars, the alleys sloping upward into cramped housing developments, the doorways leading to dark hallways that lead to offices and noodle shops the casual observer would never even know existed.”

— Paula Stokes

24. “How does the world even keep going with so much pain and tragedy everywhere?”

— Paula Stokes

25. “If you’ve never been close to death, life probably seems pretty solid. The truth is, it can be destroyed in an instant, like a photograph. One moment your world is slick and shiny. But then the Universe crumples everything into a ball. And even if you don’t get crushed, if you fight to straighten things out, your life will never be the same again.”

— Paula Stokes

26. “Faith seems to be something people develop when their lives are going good. It’s always been in short supply for me.”

— Paula Stokes

27. “I am not warm. That is why my sister chose the name Winter for me.”

— Paula Stokes

28. “To us, reality is just raw footage: Unclear. Desultory. Too shocking or not quite shocking enough. It’s ironic that making something more real involves making it less real, but Gideon always says people don’t want real. They want the idea of real, which involves production.”

— Paula Stokes

29. “No,” Gideon says. “No guns. The most dangerous weapon you have is your brain. Give someone a gun and they tend to quit using it.”

— Paula Stokes

30. “It’s not right that some people have so much and others have so little.”

— Paula Stokes

31. “My name is Winter Kim. Today I killed a man. Soon I hope to kill another.”

— Paula Stokes

32. “I’m not afraid of the dark or what hides within its shadows. To me, Mother Nature isn’t nearly as scary as human nature.”

— Paula Stokes

33. “There’s something comforting about his presence. Something that makes me feel hopeful, like everything I want is still possible.”

— Paula Stokes

34. “That’s one of the problems with nice guys. If They can’t stand up for themselves then they won’t be able to stand up for you either.”

— Paula Stokes

35. “There’s a thing that sometimes happens in your brain when you’re the only survivor of a horrific accident. Part of you is happy because you’re alive, but the rest of you is devastated. Then the sad part beats up the happy part until nothing is left, until all you feel is terrible sorrow for the people who didn’t make it. And guilt. Guilt because you wonder if the Universe made a mistake. Guilt because you know you’re not any better than those who died.”

— Paula Stokes

36. “Where does seeking justice end and seeking vengeance begin?”

— Paula Stokes

37. “Jesse and I might as well be caught in a snow globe. Tonight is just a single perfect moment trapped in glass. Tomorrow our protective bubble will be shattered.”

— Paula Stokes

38. “Lainey is hot in a prom queen kind of way and we used to be friends back in grade school, but that was two lifetimes ago. Now she’s a varsity soccer player and card-carrying popular girl who hangs out with the kind of mean girls and douchebags who get killed first in horror movies.”

— Paula Stokes

39. “Maybe I could dole out the truth in tiny pieces that, once assembled, would make a picture that resembled a reality in which I hadn’t done anything wrong.”

— Paula Stokes

40. “You can’t explain love with experiments and MRIs. I don’t care what your research says. Some things are bigger than science.”

— Paula Stokes

41. “Loneliness is just like everything else-if you endure it long enough, you get used to it.”

— Paula Stokes

42. “There are so many different ways for someone to say your name. I’m not sure I ever realized that before I met Jesse. Prior to him, it was just Rose calling out to me with love and affection or Gideon relaying his quiet approval or disapproval. Crisp, clear notes. When Jesse says my name, it’s a chord, a mash-up of several intense emotions all reflected in two syllables.”

— Paula Stokes

43. “I don’t think you can just choose to believe in God. You either do or you don’t, and no matter what camp you’re in, it would take something life-changing to truly lead you into the other one.”

— Paula Stokes

44. “It’s no small thing – ending someone else’s life. There should be some sort of gravity to that, shouldn’t there? My insides are heavy, but it has nothing to do with what I did. It is only about what I have lost.”

— Paula Stokes

45. “Killing someone is different in practice than it is in theory. There are factors you can’t prepare for, feelings in the moment where you’ll question everything you thought you knew about yourself, other feelings that might follow you long after the deed is done.”

— Paula Stokes

46. “It kind of sucks having nothing to lose, but it sucks even worse having everything good taken away from you.”

— Paula Stokes

47. “Because they recognize the only thing that separates them from us is bad luck, or making the wrong choice at the wrong time,” the woman said. “Most rich people feel like there’s a divide between them and us. They don’t see we’re all the same kind of human.”

— Paula Stokes

48. “The truth never hurts worse than finding out someone you care about lied to you.”

— Paula Stokes

49. “How will this stroke steal away my remaining dignity, let me count the ways.”

— Paula Stokes

50. “My stroke didn’t affect my intelligence, but it’s hard not to feel academically impaired when I can’t really speak or write. I mean, I know all of my knowledge is still inside me, but does anyone else know that?”

— Paula Stokes