Ilsa J. Bick Quotes

My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.

She's got the kind of ethereal, unselfconscious beauty some young girls possess that breaks your heart. Or theirs.

I am a ghost in a land of phantoms and forgotten nightmares.

As a doc, though, I've seen what happens when people are under a lot of stress. Doesn't always bring out their best. When people are scared, they get angry. They'll do things they never thought they would. They'll bargain and compromise in order to survive; they'll chase after miracle cures and believe just about anything so long as it gives them hope. When hope fails, then watch out. Some people get brutal. They'll turn on each other; they'll become their own worst enemies.

There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity. Yet many others search their entire lives for something—or someone—worth dying for and this is very different. These are the lonely and the desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. They yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger.

The things you think about when you're a hair's breath away from getting yourself killed.

We all have our fictions, little lies we tell ourselves to keep going from one day to the next.

Follow your heart. Just don't get lost.

The familiar was usually invisible; how many people really noticed everything they saw?

As the dog sprinted back, Jack said to the girl, "Sweetheart,honey, why do you have to be so hateful?" "Why not?" Ellie said. "It's not like being good ever got me anywhere.

What's the point of not taking chances? I don't know if I could stand living my whole life afraid.

Everybody breaks sooner or later, Bob. Anyone can drown. Sometimes you see it. Most often, you don’t because the body protects and the skin hides, so drowning doesn’t look like drowning and some people scar so nicely. Take it from an expert.

Obeying orders just to obey is the mark of a person who has ceased to think. Remember, it is better to suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong.

But sticking to rules just because they're there does not make them right. You need to learn when the rules should be broken.

The grief in her green eyes slips then hardens and, for an instant, Pendleton sees the woman she has become and has no right being, not at sixteen.

Why can't you like me?" he said, his voice breaking. His scent steamed then, hot and heady with a welter of contradictions: apples and fire and electric roil of those cold, black shadows. "Why can't you like me just a little?" She would never know how she might have answered, because he never gave her the chance. Instead, he kissed her.

They call it the drowning instinct. It's when drowning doesn't look like drowning. (pg. 241)

This is a fairy tale with teeth and claws.

Sometimes you don't know what you need until it's gone

So I need the story, Jenna. I need the truth. Right, like the two are the same thing.

Those brain-zapped kids weren’t the only - or maybe even the worst - enemy.