Top 500 Tahereh Mafi Quotes (2023 Update)
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301. “That’s how I knew, for example, that Private Seamus Fletcher, 45B-76423, was beating his wife and children every night.”

— Tahereh Mafi

302. “My thoughts, I think, will soon be sound. My mind, I hope, will soon be found.”

— Tahereh Mafi

303. “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

304. “I want you to make a list of all of your favorite things, and I want to be on it.”

— Tahereh Mafi

305. “Grieve nothing in this transitory world.”

— Tahereh Mafi

306. “We’re too different now. We want different things. And this?” I say nodding at our hands. “All this managed to prove is that you are extremely good at turning me off.”

— Tahereh Mafi

307. “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

308. “Realization is ice-cold water and it’s dripping down my back.”

— Tahereh Mafi

309. “I want her clothes off and the lights on and I want to study her. I want to unzip her out of this dress and take my time with every inch of her. I can’t help my need to just stare; to know her and her features: the slope of her nose, the curve of her lips, the line of her jaw. I want to run my fingertips across the soft skin of her neck and trace it all the way down. I want to feel the weight of her pressed against me, wrapped around me.”

— Tahereh Mafi

310. “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

311. “Kill because they’re bad, and we’re good. Kill because we tell you to. Because some people are so stupid that they actually think there are thick neon lines separating good and evil.”

— Tahereh Mafi

312. “I study every quivering branch, every imposing soldier, every window I can count. My eyes are two professional pickpockets, stealing everything to store away in my mind.”

— Tahereh Mafi

313. “I imagine this is what it feels like to fall apart.”

— Tahereh Mafi

314. “I feel so shy so suddenly. So blind, so unnecessarily bold.”

— Tahereh Mafi

315. “No one is ever close enough. I suck in my breath and wait for him to walk away like everyone else in my life. I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better, stronger. I want to be angry angry angry.”

— Tahereh Mafi

316. “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

317. “It’s just a whisper of a kiss but something collapses in my skull. It’s a feather-light brush of his mouth against my skin in a place I can’t quite see. It’s my mind speaking in a thousand different languages I don’t understand.”

— Tahereh Mafi

318. “He takes my hand. Intertwines our fingers. Offers me a smile that manages to kiss my heart.”

— Tahereh Mafi

319. “Love, it turned out, could both hurt and heal.”

— Tahereh Mafi

320. “His arms are tatted up, half sleeves to his elbows. His eyebrow is missing a ring they must’ve confiscated. Dark blue eyes dark brown hair sharp jawline strong lean frame. Gorgeous Dangerous. Terrifying. Horrible.”

— Tahereh Mafi

321. “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

322. “In just two days, one girl has managed to cripple me.”

— Tahereh Mafi

323. “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

324. “I’m beginning to think of hope as a dangerous, terrifying thing.”

— Tahereh Mafi

325. “I’m not sure. But there’s something about the darkness, the stillness of this hour, I think, that creates a language of its own. There’s a strange kind of freedom in the dark; a terrifying vulnerability we allow ourselves at exactly the wrong moment, tricked by the darkness into thinking it will keep our secrets. We forget that the blackness is not a blanket; we forget that the sun will soon rise. But in the moment, at least, we feel brave enough to say things we’d never say in the light.”

— Tahereh Mafi

326. “I feel like I’ve been fitted for wings.”

— Tahereh Mafi

327. “I have a pretty spectacular face.”

— Tahereh Mafi

328. “We were two sad people stuck together.”

— Tahereh Mafi

329. “It’s like I’ve been stuffed full of twigs and all I have to do is bend and my body will break. All the guilt, the anger, the frustration, the pent-up aggression inside of me has found an outlet and now it can’t be controlled.”

— Tahereh Mafi

330. “My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together.”

— Tahereh Mafi

331. “Who says you can’t be cute and kick ass at the same time?” Kenji winks at me. “I do it every day.”

— Tahereh Mafi

332. “This is the antonym of excellent.”

— Tahereh Mafi

333. “It’s not the pain that’s unendurable. It’s the hopelessness. It’s the hopelessness that makes you reckless.”

— Tahereh Mafi

334. “And some days I wonder why I insist on keeping myself alive.”

— Tahereh Mafi

335. “This, I think, is the way to die. I could drown in this moment and I’d never regret it. I could catch fire from this kiss and happily turn to ash. I could live here, die here, right here, against his hips, his lips. In the emotion in his eyes as he sinks into me, his heartbeats indistinguishable from mine. This. Forever. This.”

— Tahereh Mafi

336. “Your eyes are so deep. So calm. I want to know what you’re thinking.”

— Tahereh Mafi

337. “I don’t know much about anything in this world but I do know how to read the book written in his eyes.”

— Tahereh Mafi

338. “Narrow-mindedness will only get you as far as Nowhere, and once you’re there, you’re lost forever.”

— Tahereh Mafi

339. “It was so hard for Ocean to stomach that the world was filled with such awful people. I tried to tell him that the bigots and the racists had always been there, and he said he’d honestly never seen them like this, that he never thought they could be like this, and I said yes, I know. I said that’s how privilege works.”

— Tahereh Mafi

340. “I realize I’m paying attention to nothing but the dandelions blowing wishes in my lungs.”

— Tahereh Mafi

341. “They say there were birds who used to soar through the skies like planes. It seems strange that a small animal could achieve anything as complex as human engineering, but the possibility is too enticing to ignore.”

— Tahereh Mafi

342. “We were killing ourselves by trying to stay alive.”

— Tahereh Mafi

343. “In my very limited experience I’ve already found that people seeking power are not to be trusted.”

— Tahereh Mafi

344. “The Sun is an arrogant thing, always leaving the world behind when it tires of us. 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. Everyday it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of life. The Moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.”

— Tahereh Mafi

345. “The morning arrived the way Alice imagined a whisper would: in tendrils of gray and threads of gold, quietly, quietly. The sky was illuminated with great care and deliberation, and she leaned back to watch it bloom.”

— Tahereh Mafi

346. “How can you say that?” he said, and I heard his voice break. “How can you even think that? I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I want everything with you,” he said. “I want all of it with you. I want you. I want this forever.”

— Tahereh Mafi

347. “I forget, sometimes, that there are people out there who still manage to smile everyday, despite everything.”

— Tahereh Mafi

348. “Alice dropped her head, because sadness had left hinges in her bones.”

— Tahereh Mafi

349. “I’m suspended in the moment. I blink and bottle my breaths.”

— Tahereh Mafi

350. “That this isn’t just a factory. It’s a slaughterhouse. I.”

— Tahereh Mafi