Top 500 Tahereh Mafi Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 7 of 10

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

— Tahereh Mafi

302. “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

303. “My mind is a maze of impossibility.”

— Tahereh Mafi

304. “This was my miserable choice. I brought it upon myself.”

— Tahereh Mafi

305. “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

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

— Tahereh Mafi

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

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

— Tahereh Mafi

311. “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

312. “I’d rather be shot dead screaming for justice than die alone in a prison of my own making.”

— Tahereh Mafi

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

— Tahereh Mafi

314. “She saved my life, that’s for sure. Reached out a hand in the darkness. Pulled me out.”

— Tahereh Mafi

315. “And the stitches in my heart begin to pop. One by one.”

— Tahereh Mafi

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

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

— Tahereh Mafi

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

— Tahereh Mafi

321. “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

322. “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

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

— Tahereh Mafi

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

— Tahereh Mafi

325. “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

326. “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

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

— Tahereh Mafi

328. “Grieve nothing in this transitory world.”

— Tahereh Mafi

329. “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

330. “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

331. “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

332. “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

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

— Tahereh Mafi

334. “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

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

— Tahereh Mafi

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

— Tahereh Mafi

337. “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

338. “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

339. “I am a whisper that never was.”

— Tahereh Mafi

340. “Friendship is not a thing I have ever experienced. Not as a child, and not as I am now.”

— Tahereh Mafi

341. “The darkness is like a black canvas punctured by a blunt knife, with beams of light peeking through.”

— Tahereh Mafi

342. “These are my soldiers. Standing single-file line in their assembly uniforms. Black shirts, black pants, black boots. No guns. Left fist pressed against their hearts.”

— Tahereh Mafi

343. “Juliette Ferrars, one of the most feared, most lauded heroes of our known world, is crying over a dog.”

— Tahereh Mafi

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

— Tahereh Mafi

345. “Everything seems to be catching up with me at once. My failures. My cowardice. My stupidity. Sometimes I’m just so tired of this life.”

— Tahereh Mafi

346. “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

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

— Tahereh Mafi

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

— Tahereh Mafi

349. “But time is beyond our finite comprehension. It’s endless, it exists outside of us; we cannot run out of it or lose track of it or find a way to hold on to it. Time goes on even when we do not.”

— Tahereh Mafi

350. “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