In Other Words 9/30/11

In Other Words, one of our favorite memes here at Reading Lark, has moved to Fridays. Each Friday we bring you a collection of literary quotes selected by our awesome blog team centered around a different theme or topic. Enjoy - and feel free to share YOUR favorite quote about this week's theme in our comments section!  

I've always been the girl who falls for the bad guy (in books anyway). It's always a challenge for me to find the good in everyone. I recently had this challenge when I read The Darkness of Perfection by Michael Schneider. I hated...and loved...Nicholas, he made me angry, and then I would get a glimpse that maybe there was some good in him. I have never before hated to love the main male character of a novel like I did Nicholas. So that's where I got my idea for this week's theme...

Villains We Love to Hate... or Hate to Love?

Tevya: “You want to believe in black and white, good and evil, heroes that are truly heroic, villains that are just plain bad, but I've learned in the past year that things are rarely so simple. The good guys can do some truly awful things, and the bad guys can sometimes surprise the heck out of you.” 

 ― Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever)

“What if I'm not a superhero. What if I'm the bad guy?”

― Stephenie Meyer (Twilight) 

“I learned the bad guys are not always bad, the good guys are not always good, and to quote Captain Barbossa, the parameters are like rules, mostly guidelines. And that it takes a little bit of bad boy to fight the evil in the world. --Terri Mitchell” 

― Sherrilyn Kenyon (Phantom in the Night) 

Andrea: ‎"Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory." 

— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

"Like any normal fifth grader, I preferred my villains to be evil and stay that way, to act like Dracula rather than Frankenstein's monster, who ruined everything by handing that peasant girl a flower. He sort of made up for it by drowning her a few minutes later, but, still, you couldn't look at him the same way again." 

 — David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames) 

Paula: "Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell." 

~Shakespeare (Macbeth)

"One may smile, and smile, and be a villain." 

~Shakespeare (Hamlet) 

"I pray one prayer, I repeat it till my tongue stiffens. Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you, haunt me, then! Be with me always, take any form, drive me mad, only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul." 

~Bronte (Wuthering Heights)