Top 200 Ruta Sepetys Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “My throat tightened. I swallowed, reminding myself she wasn’t really gone. I felt Mama among the trees. I could feel her touch and hear her laughter in the leaves. So I talked to the trees as I walked, hoping their branches would carry messages up to Mama and let her know what I had done, and most of all, that I would try to be brave.”

— Ruta Sepetys

52. “We cannot be too cautious, Hannelore. Just because someone knocks on the door doesn’t mean you have to open it. Sometimes, sweet girl, there are wolves at the door. If we are not careful, they might eat us.”

— Ruta Sepetys

53. “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.”

— Ruta Sepetys

54. “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.”

— Ruta Sepetys

55. “Every nation has hidden history, countless stories preserved only by those who experienced them. Stories of war are often read and discussed worldwide by readers whose nations stood on opposite sides during battle. History divided us, but through reading we can be united in story, study, and remembrance. Books join us together as a global reading community, but more important, a global human community striving to learn from the past.”

— Ruta Sepetys

56. “Silence has a voice of its own.”

— Ruta Sepetys

57. “If I poured all the lies I had told into the Mississippi, the river would rise and flood the city.”

— Ruta Sepetys

58. “My war had been so long, my winter so cold. But i had made it home. And for the first time in a long time, i was not afraid.”

— Ruta Sepetys

59. “Sometimes kindness can be delivered in a clumsy way. But it’s far more sincere in its clumsiness than those distinguished men you read about in books. Your father was very clumsy.”

— Ruta Sepetys

60. “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?”

— Ruta Sepetys

61. “Evil will rule until good men or women choose to act.”

— Ruta Sepetys

62. “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.”

— Ruta Sepetys

63. “We all laced together – a brothel madam, an English professor, a mute cook, a quadroon cabbie, and me, the girl carrying a bucket of lies and throwing them like confetti.”

— Ruta Sepetys

64. “What did I want? I wanted the war to be over so I could ask her out.”

— Ruta Sepetys

65. “Those memories, they are the coals that shield my heart from frost.”

— Ruta Sepetys

66. “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.”

— Ruta Sepetys

67. “Books join us together as a global reading community, but more important, a global human community striving to learn from the past. What.”

— Ruta Sepetys

68. “Through my own struggles I’ve learned that knowing is something that evolves. What we think we know can be quite far from the truth.”

— Ruta Sepetys

69. “Paradise: If communism is Paradise, why do we need barriers, walls, and laws to keep people from escaping?”

— Ruta Sepetys

70. “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.”

— Ruta Sepetys

71. “I thought of Munch as I sketched, his theory that pain, love, and despair were links in an endless chain.”

— Ruta Sepetys

72. “She is you, she is your mother, your father, your country. She is Poland.”

— Ruta Sepetys

73. “You’re wrong. They steal our power by making us believe we don’t have any. They’re controlling us through our own fear.”

— Ruta Sepetys

74. “We the survivors are not the true witnesses. The true witnesses, those in possession of the unspeakable truth, are the drowned, the dead, the disappeared. – Primo Levi.”

— Ruta Sepetys

75. “Some friendships are born of commonality. Others of proximity. And some friendships, often the unlikely ones, are born of survival. Rafa and his friend are comrades of hardship. They refuse to speak of the boys’ home in Barcelona. It was not a “home.” It was a hellhole, a slaughterhouse of souls. The “brothers” and “matrons” who ran the institution took pleasure in the humiliation of children. The mere memory is poison.”

— Ruta Sepetys

76. “Willie said normal was boring and that I should be grateful that I had a touch of spice. She said no one cared about boring people, and when they died, they were forgotten, like something that slips behind the dresser.”

— Ruta Sepetys

77. “Mother was comfort. Mother was home. A girl who lost her mother was suddenly a tiny boat on an angry ocean. Some boats eventually floated ashore. And some boats, like me, seemed to float farther and farther from land.”

— Ruta Sepetys

78. “My arm began moving, turning the invisible crank of Death’s music box. Somewhere inside, I didn’t want the melody to end.”

— Ruta Sepetys

79. “They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren’t to benefit. We’d been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean. I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we’d get a little closer.”

— Ruta Sepetys

80. “You like me, Josie Moraine. You just don’t know it yet.”

— Ruta Sepetys

81. “The soldier stared at Ingrid. His silence was elastic, slowly curling a rope around her neck.”

— Ruta Sepetys

82. “The Wilhelm Gustloff was pregnant with lost souls conceived of war. They would crowd into her belly and she would give birth to their freedom.”

— Ruta Sepetys

83. “His smugness was annoying. This was the type of man who looked at a picture on the wall and instead of admiring the photo, looked at his own reflection in the glass.”

— Ruta Sepetys

84. “Somehow I had to turn the salted peanuts in the cigar box into petits fours.”

— Ruta Sepetys

85. “Valencia. City by the sea, birthplace of her favorite painter, Sorolla. Hotel guests speak of Valencia’s tranquil beauty, fragrant orange trees, and rolling blue waters. What does a large body of water sound and smell like? Ana wonders. Landlocked, fenced by circumstance, she has never seen the sea. She sees Spain only through images on postcards that guests collect in their rooms. If she transfers to the hotel business office, perhaps one day she too will walk along the beach in Valencia.”

— Ruta Sepetys

86. “I clung to books and words because, unlike people, they’d never abandon me.”

— Ruta Sepetys

87. “A wrongdoing doesn’t give you the right to do wrong. You know that.”

— Ruta Sepetys

88. “He doesn’t carry the disease of fear.” “It’s easy to be fearless when you have nothing to lose,” says Julia.”

— Ruta Sepetys

89. “I inhaled my tears in order to speak. “I’m sure I want to go, but I’m not sure it’s possible. Why would they accept me? And if they did, how would I pay for it? I don’t want to get my hopes up only to be disappointed. I’m always disappointed.” “Now, don’t let fear keep you in New Orleans. Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin’ we’re goin’ one place and we end up another. But that’s okay. The important thing is to start. I know you can do it. Come on, Josie girl, give those ol’ wings a try.”

— Ruta Sepetys

90. “Death, it seems, has a mind of its own.”

— Ruta Sepetys

91. “When they reach the fountain, Rafa pumps the long arm, sending water sloshing into a wooden pail held by a shrunken white-haired woman. “Should we carry the bucket for her?” asks Daniel. “She won’t let you. Besides, that woman is stronger than both of us combined,” says Rafa with a laugh.”

— Ruta Sepetys

92. “Tragedy was a big social event, and everyone wanted in on it.”

— Ruta Sepetys

93. “Good men are often more practical than pretty.”

— Ruta Sepetys

94. “The State controls the amount of food we eat, our electricity, our transportation, the information we receive. But with philosophy, we control our own minds. What if the internal landscape was ours to build and paint?”

— Ruta Sepetys

95. “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.”

— Ruta Sepetys

96. “The old man nodded. “There’s a saying, ‘Death hath a thousand doors to let out life; I shall find one.’ We all have a door that waits. I know that. I accept it. But the children. That’s what I struggle with.”

— Ruta Sepetys

97. “When the survivors are gone we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice.”

— Ruta Sepetys

98. “You see, fear is a hunter. It encircles us when we are unarmed and least expect it. And then we are forced to make decisions.”

— Ruta Sepetys

99. “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.”

— Ruta Sepetys

100. “Hope, like oxygen, is what kept her going.”

— Ruta Sepetys