Chelsey Philpot Quotes

I think inspiration is strongest when I find a balance between observation and participation. You can’t write about what it means to dance by watching from the bleachers.

The hours were long, but the days were short, and as much as I willed it to never come, the end of summer arrived anyway.

Childhood is not all candy stores and recess; it’s frustrations and confusions, too.

Even knowing everything, I would have chosen the same.It's only in hindsight that we can point, as easily as finding a town on a map, to the moments that shaped us, - the moments when choices between yeses and noes determined the people we become.

In the Empire, the Scholars are not allowed to read and, like so many bullies and power-seekers who hide behind ideologies to justify the terrible things they do, their oppressors wear masks. 'An Ember in the Ashes' suggests that such masks (literal or figurative) don’t work. Not forever, anyway. Masks only cover faces. It’s actions that show who we are.

We cannot 100 percent know the depth of another person’s heart. We cannot know the whys and whats of his soul.This idea could be sad, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of rendering human beings powerless, it could render them more compassionate. Knowing that the stranger who just bumped you in the hall or that the awkward loner who sits behind you in class each have a story, makes it easier to chose kindness — again, again, and again.

Even knowing, as I do now, that grace, power, and, yes, love can hide the darkest elements of the human heart, I would do it all again.

Heartache, guilt, loss, grief, these things, too, are monsters.