Books
2017 is ending, and believe it or not, you're still here! It's time to celebrate the end of this crazy year, and ring in the new year to come. So, here are some great book quotes to commemorate this wild year. Pin them to your wall. Post them on your Instagram. All will be helpful in saying adios to 2017 for good. It won't surprise you that many of them are from feminist manifestos and apocalyptic fiction. After all, didn't it feel like Margaret Atwood must have secretly authored this year?
It would be impossible (and depressing) to list the myriad travesties of 2017. But of course, good things happened, too. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got engaged. Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Beyoncé had twins! In the midst of everything, life has managed to march on.
Through the ups and the downs of 2017, books have remained a beacon of light. After all, books have taught us so much about facing hard times, persevering through difficult circumstances, and taking on the impossible with gusto and bravery.
Here are 15 quotes from books that sum up 2017 perfectly. Now, 2018, can you hurry up and get here already?
"Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum" or "Don't let the bastards grind you down."
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
"What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?”
― Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
― George Orwell, 1984
"It is important to fight and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then can evil be kept at bay though never quite eradicated.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
“He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort
“I sat in the dark and thought: There’s no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.”
― Neil Gaiman, Signal to Noise
“Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent
"You may shoot me with your words,/ You may cut me with your eyes,/ You may kill me with your hatefulness,/ But still, like air, I’ll rise."
― Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise"
"If I stop being angry, I’m afraid I’ll fall apart until I’m just a warm mound of flesh on the floor.”
― Erika L. Sánchez, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
“The first thing that happens at the end of the world is that we don’t know what is happening.”
― Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
― S.K. Ali, Saints and Misfits
“Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.”
― Marie Lu, Legend
“Once evil is individualized, becoming part of everyday life, the way of resisting it also becomes individual. How does the soul survive? is the essential question. And the response is: through love and imagination.”
― Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
