Top 70 Paula Stokes Quotes (2026 Update)

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

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

7. “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

8. “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

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

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

11. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

— Paula Stokes

16. “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

17. “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

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

— Paula Stokes

19. “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

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

— Paula Stokes

21. “How do you make me smile when it seems like there’s nothing in the whole world to smile about?”

— Paula Stokes

22. “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

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

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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

28. “How can something feel so crucial in the moment and then seem completely trivial after the fact?”

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

30. “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

31. “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

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

— Paula Stokes

34. “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

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

— Paula Stokes

36. “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

37. “I’ve read so many stories online about how tragedy brings people together, how hard times encourage bravery and sacrifice, how a crisis can turn ordinary folks into heroes. But what about the opposite, when something horrible happens and it strips us bare, exposing weaknesses we didn’t even know we had. What about when tragedy makes people worse?”

— Paula Stokes

38. “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

39. “Some people just want to be part of the story, even if it’s a story that’s completely fabricated.”

— Paula Stokes

40. “Our “protective bubbles” – our houses, our cars, our friends, our online identities – might make us feel secure, but most of it’s just an illusion. It’s easy to get hurt, just like it’s easy to hurt other people.”

— Paula Stokes

41. “Enough with the apologies. I can’t just forgive seventeen years of hurt all at once. But you can do better, all right? From today onward, do better. Not just for me. For my mom too.”

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

43. “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

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

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

46. “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

47. “Whether I deserve affection is not dependent upon how quickly I learn to speak fluently again.”

— Paula Stokes

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

— Paula Stokes

49. “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

50. “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