Robin Roe > Quotes

“Hate ricochets, but kindness does too.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“Why is time like that? Why does it slow down in the places you don’t want it to, but it speeds away when you’re happy?”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“Because people heal a whole lot faster when they're with someone who loves them”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“If I really had powers, I could turn off pain the way I can shut my eyes. But I can’t. I feel it. Skin doesn’t get thicker. Instead, it remembers.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“Getting smacked in the face with a Harry Potter book does not qualify as a fight," Charlie says.
"First of all, it wasn't just any Harry Potter book. It was Order of the Phoenix."
Matt gasps. He knows that Order of the Phoenix is the longest and most potentially dangerous of all the Harry Potter books when used as a weapon.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“I used to think struggle was what aged you, but if that were the case, Julian should have been a hundred years old. Now I wonder if the opposite is true. Maybe instead of accelerating your age, pain won't let you grow.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“when you’re between two shores and no one can see you, you don’t really exist at all.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“She said no one is evil, only unhappy, and unhappiness festers inside like sores.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“And when you smile…my grandmother calls them big-soul smiles. She says some people have souls so big that they spread out, touching everyone they pass.” Emerald wipes her wet face again. “There are different ways to help people, Adam. There are different ways to do good.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“I know what I think, but people don't want you to say what you think. They want you to say what they think. And knowing what that is isn't easy.”
― robin roe, A List of Cages

“It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered.... When you know you're going to tell someone everything, you see your day through your eyes and theirs, as if they're living it alongside you. But when you don't, it isn't only not seeing double--it's not seeing at all. Because if they aren't there, you aren't either.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“I'm dizzy. I'm here. I'm alive.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“When you know you’re going to tell someone everything, you see your day through your eyes and theirs, as if they’re living it alongside you. But when you don’t, it isn’t only not seeing double—it’s not seeing at all. Because if they aren’t there, you aren’t either.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“You don’t really know people when your back is turned.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“This part is hardest. A billion years of evolution tells your cells to run. But you can’t run. You have to turn around and face the desert wall.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“Their eyes like safety nets, I can’t fall.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“Superheroes aren't real, and even if they were, they come too late.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“What keeps you trapped?...What keeps you from living the life you want? What keeps you from being free?”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“There was nowhere to go that me and the pain didn’t follow.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“I want my body to be mine again.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“Next time you have to hand something in, just tell me. I can proofread it or whatever." I nod, but I know I won't. If he's being nice enough to offer, I should be nice enough to never do it.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“My mother once said that the planet was like an enormous womb, and every single one of us was a fetus. Death was nothing to be afraid of. It was just birth to another world, and someone would be waiting for us there. Sometimes I try to see this, my mother and father as two newborns holding hands and ejected into this other world. There they are just beginning.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“And when you smile…my grandmother calls them big-soul smiles. She says some people have souls so big that they spread out, touching everyone they pass.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“Because when you’re between two shores and no one can see you, you don’t really exist at all.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“I should be afraid, but I feel empty. I remember my father’s hands. My mother’s hands. What hands are meant to do.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“He sounds so tired. "I know if there was any choice at all, they wouldn't have left me alone. They would have made sure I was taken care of."
In a heartbeat, a thousand memories at once. All the times I knew things I couldn't have known. All the times he was assigned to me.
"Julian," I say, "maybe they did.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“But wanting isn't the same as having.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages

“But whenever I would imagine leaving, I’d see the blue sky like the ocean—no walls or shore or end in sight. And I’d see myself disappear.”
― Robin Roe, A List of Cages