Top 55 Quotes & Sayings by Tahereh Mafi

Insane for your sweet, sweet love!

I can do anything I want. Be with anyone I want. And it'll be my choice.

Fun fact #1 about pomegranates: Pomegranates are awesome.Fun fact #2: Pomegranates are like little explosions of awesome in your mouth.Fun fact #3: A lot of people think you're not supposed to eat the seeds of a pomegranate - but that's not true, people who tell you that are liars, and they don't know anything about life, and they should never be trusted.

Hope in this world bleeds out of the barrel of a gun.

You are moody. It’s always ‘Shut up, Kenji.’ ‘Go to sleep, Kenji.’ ‘No one wants to see you naked, Kenji.’ When I know for a fact that there are thousands of people who would love to see me naked—

I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters.

His lips soften into a smile that cracks apart my spine. He repeats my name like the word amuses him. Entertains him. Delights him. In seventeen years no one has said my name like that

This pen is my only outlet, my only voice, because I have no one else to speak to, no mind but my own to drown in and all the lifeboats are taken and all the life preservers are broken and I don't know how to swim I can't swim I can't swim and it's getting so hard. It's getting so hard. It's like there are a million screams caught inside of my chest but I have to keep them all in because what's the point of screaming if you'll never be heard and no one will ever hear me in here. No one will ever hear me again.

I love you exactly as you are.

The words get easier the moment you stop fearing them.

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

I want your mind. Your strength. I want to be worth your time.

I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

I'm wondering how many more mistakes I'll have to make before things finally fall into place. If they ever will.

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

We are synonyms but not the same.

And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose.

A handful of letters doesn't always make a word, love.

Hope can make people do terrible things.

I tuck caution into my pocket and hope I can reach for it if I need to.

Only an idiot would rely on the energy of a bean or a leaf to stay awake throughout the day.

Hope. It's like a drop of honey, a field of tulips blooming in the springtime. It's a fresh rain, a whispered promise, a cloudless sky, the perfect punctuation mark at the end of a sentence. And it's the only thing in the world keeping me afloat.

I have a heart, says science, but I am a monster, says society.

On the darkest days you have to search for a spot of brightness, on the coldest days you have to seek out a spot of warmth; on the bleakest days you have to keep your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give them a chance to wash out the pain in order to see fresh and clear once again.

My words wear no parachutes as they fall out of my mouth.

Hope is a pocket of possibility. I'm holding it in my hand.

I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend. The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body. I want to know where to touch you, I want to know how to touch you. I want to know convince you to design a smile just for me. Yes, I do want to be your friend. I want to be your best friend in the entire world.

Time goes on even when we do not.

All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.

Girls are always talking about electricity in their romance, but none are too happy to actually be electrocuted, apparently. Bloody confusing, is what it is.

I’ve come to believe that the most dangerous man in the world is the one who feels no remorse. The one who never apologizes and therefore seeks no forgiveness. Because in the end it is our emotions that make us weak, not our actions.

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

It's the kind of kiss that inspires stars to climb into the sky and light up the world.

People seldom realize that they tell lies with their lips and truths with their eyes all the time.

You deserve to live. You deserve to be alive.

Synonyms know each other like old colleagues, like a set of friends who've seen the world together. They swap stories, reminisce about their origins and forget that though they are similar, they are entirely different, and though they share a certain set of attributes, one can never be the other. Because a quiet night is not the same as a silent one, a firm man is not the same as a steady one, and a bright light is not the same as a brilliant one because the way they wedge themselves into a sentence changes everything.

Hope will break your heart all over again.

I feel like I've been split open and stuffed with sunshine.

Sometimes you have to learn how to shoot first.

It's hot rain and humid days and broken thermostats. It's screaming and raging steam engines and wanting to take your clothes off just to feel a breeze. It's the kind of kiss that makes you realize oxygen is overrated.

I'm oxygen and he's dying to breathe.

My mind is a warehouse of carefully organized human emotions. I lock away the things that do not serve me.

Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too.

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.

Sometimes a book isn't a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Sometimes it's the only story you know how to tell.

Why sleep when there are books to read.

His hands are holding my cheeks, and he pulls back just to look me in the eye and his chest is heaving and he says, "I think," he says, "my heart is going to explode," and I wish, more than ever, that I knew how to capture moments like these and revisit them forever. Because this. This is everything.

Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them.

I spent my life folded between the pages of books. In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

People can think whatever they like. I don't desire their validation.

The world is a mess and I want to laugh because all I can think is how horrible and beautiful it is, that our eyes blur the truth when we can't bear to see it.

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. Every day it’s a different version of itself. Sometimes weak and wan, sometimes strong and full of light. The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections.

I love walking into a bookstore. It's like all my friends are sitting on shelves, waving their pages at me.

In a world where there is so much to grieve and so little good to take? I grieve nothing. I take everything.

I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better, stronger. I want to be the bird that flies away.