Top 500 Tahereh Mafi Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “He’s such a social guy – and so popular around here – that sometimes I wonder where he got it from. In many ways he’s the exact opposite of me. He likes to let a lot of people in; I like to keep most people out.”

— Tahereh Mafi

302. “The afternoon our story begins, the quiet parts of being alive were the busiest: wind unlocking Windows; rainlight nudging curtains apart; fresh-cut grass tickling unsocked feet. Days like this made Alice want to set off on a great adventure.”

— Tahereh Mafi

303. “Mother often said that she could never be bothered to understand why Alice did the things she did, and now, more than ever, Alice thought never being bothered was a very lazy way to love someone.”

— Tahereh Mafi

304. “My body felt like it was now made entirely of nerves, like muscle and bone had been removed to make room for all this new emotion.”

— Tahereh Mafi

305. “I’m an old creaky staircase when I wake up.”

— Tahereh Mafi

306. “But it’s my wedding day,” she says. “And I have nothing to wear.” “You’re right.” I kiss the top of her head. “I’m going to kill him.”

— Tahereh Mafi

307. “This notebook might be all I have left of her. My hand is still hovering over the cover, tempting me to open it and find her again, even if it’s only for a short while, even if it’s only on paper. But part of me is terrified. This might not end well. This might not be anything I want to see. And so help me, if this turns out to be some kind of diary concerning her thoughts and feelings about Kent, I might just throw myself out the window.”

— Tahereh Mafi

308. “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

309. “Every single time you claim to understand even a fraction of what I’m feeling, I want to disembowel you. I want to sever your carotid artery. I want to rip out your vertebrae, one by one. You have no idea what it is to love her,” he says angrily. “You couldn’t even begin to imagine. So stop trying to understand.”

— Tahereh Mafi

310. “Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future.”

— Tahereh Mafi

311. “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

312. “You have to get it together, girl, or you’re not going to get through this alive. You have no idea what’s going on behind the scenes or what the other commanders have in store for you. Lena won’t be the last of us to arrive here, you know. And no one is coming here to play nice.” “Good. Let them come.”

— Tahereh Mafi

313. “I need to cool off,” I tell him, trying to moderate my voice. I’ll be back to shave your head while you’re sleeping.”

— Tahereh Mafi

314. “But I’m shocked by the tenderness in his voice. The sincerity with which he wants to know. He’s like a feral dog, crazed and wild, thirsty for chaos, simultaneously aching for recognition and acceptance. Love.”

— Tahereh Mafi

315. “I see women and children starving to death, homes destroyed and buried in rubble, the countryside a burnt landscape, its only fruit the rotting flesh of casualties. I see dead dead dead red and burgundy and maroon and the richest shade of your mother’s favorite lipstick all smeared into the earth.”

— Tahereh Mafi

316. “You’re a coward,” he whispers. “You want to be with me and it terrifies you. And you’re ashamed,” he says. “Ashamed you could ever want someone like me. Aren’t you?”

— Tahereh Mafi

317. “I often felt like a very old person trapped in a young person’s body.”

— Tahereh Mafi

318. “We’ve been shattered and reconstructed, told to make an effort every single day to pretend we still function the way we’re supposed to. But it’s a lie, it’s all a lie; every person, place, thing and idea is a lie. I do not function properly. I am nothing more than the consequence of catastrophe.”

— Tahereh Mafi

319. “Who’s Bruce Lee?” Kenji asks, horrified. “Oh my God. We can’t even be friends anymore.”

— Tahereh Mafi

320. “My dreams are bloody and bleeding and blood is bleeding all over my mind and I can’t sleep anymore.”

— Tahereh Mafi

321. “I’m so thirsty I could inhale a waterfall.”

— Tahereh Mafi

322. “Because Warner is beautiful in ways even Adam isn’t.”

— Tahereh Mafi

323. “If I ever catch you putting your hands on him again, I will tear open your chest,” she says, “and rip out your heart.”

— Tahereh Mafi

324. “Grieve nothing in this transitory world.”

— Tahereh Mafi

325. “I head straight into the living room, eager to put distance between me and whatever keeps happening to my head when Warner gets too close. I need air. I need a new brain. I need to jump out of a window and catch a ride with a dragon to a world far from here.”

— Tahereh Mafi

326. “And I pull her in, press my forehead to hers. “Those who do not understand you,” I say softly, “will always doubt you.”

— Tahereh Mafi

327. “Beautiful enough to lure in prey, he said. Strong enough to clamp down and destroy, he said.”

— Tahereh Mafi

328. “My heart is a field of lilies blooming under a pane of glass, pitter-pattering to life like a rush of raindrops.”

— Tahereh Mafi

329. “I wanted to ask her so many questions but I didn’t because we don’t talk to people anymore because saying something would be stranger than saying nothing to a stranger.”

— Tahereh Mafi

330. “Why sleep when there are books to read.”

— Tahereh Mafi

331. “Words are like seeds, I think, planted into our hearts at a tender age.”

— Tahereh Mafi

332. “We were killing ourselves by trying to stay alive. The weather, the plants, the animals, and our human survival are all inextricably linked. The natural elements were at war with one another because we abused our ecosystem. Abused our atmosphere. Abused our animals. Abused our fellow man.”

— Tahereh Mafi

333. “I will give no one the satisfaction of my death.”

— Tahereh Mafi

334. “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

335. “Different women felt comfortable in different outfits. They were all beautiful.”

— Tahereh Mafi

336. “I need air. I need a new brain. I need to jump out a window and catch a ride with a dragon to a world far from here.”

— Tahereh Mafi

337. “Everything I want to say and everything I’ve wished to say begins to take shape, falling to the floor and scrambling upright. Paragraphs and paragraphs begin building walls around me, blocking and justifying as they find ways to fit together, linking and weaving and leaving no room for escape. And every single space between every unspoken word clambers up and into my open mouth, down my throat and into my chest, filling me with so much emptiness I think I might just float away.”

— Tahereh Mafi

338. “Torture is not torture when there’s any hope of relief.”

— Tahereh Mafi

339. “I was tired of focusing on my anger. I was tired of focusing only on my memories of terrible people and the terrible things they’d said and done to me. I was tired of it. The darkness took up too much valuable real estate in my head.”

— Tahereh Mafi

340. “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

341. “I felt blind and deaf at the same time, like i was moving through a fog, and i realized then- as i realizd everytime something like this happened- that i was never as strong as i hope to be.”

— Tahereh Mafi

342. “If time stands still nothing can go wrong.”

— Tahereh Mafi

343. “Ramadan was over. We celebrated, we exchanged gifts, and Navid devoured the contents of our entire kitchen.”

— Tahereh Mafi

344. “And I can’t help but be amazed at the power such small, unassuming animals wield over us; they so easily break down our defenses.”

— Tahereh Mafi

345. “I could live here, I think. Live where gravity does not know my name. Here I am unbound, untethered by the chains of this life. I am a different body, a different shell, and my weight is carried by the hands of friends. So many nights I’ve wished I could fall asleep under this sheet.”

— Tahereh Mafi

346. “I am a whisper that never was.”

— Tahereh Mafi

347. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. I feel off, unbalanced. Aching for something. I’m losing sight of my purpose, my sense of direction. I always tell myself that I’m fighting every day for hope, for the salvation of humanity, but every time I survive only to return to yet more loss and devastation, something comes loose inside of me. It’s like the people and places I love are the nuts and bolts keeping me upright; without them, I’m just scrap metal.”

— Tahereh Mafi

348. “The darkness is choking me.”

— Tahereh Mafi

349. “That’s how I knew, for example, that Private Seamus Fletcher, 45B-76423, was beating his wife and children every night.”

— Tahereh Mafi

350. “We don’t have to do anything at all to die. We can hide in a cupboard under the stairs our whole life and it’ll still find us.”

— Tahereh Mafi