Tara Sim > Quotes

“You're everything. You're... You're chaos and order and everything between. Like sunshine kept back by clouds. Like the entire world's imploded inside you, but all I see are the stars are sewn into your skin. You're filled with soft, dark music. I hear it all the time. Your music.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“There comes a moment when time seems to slip faster, running long then short, shadows shrinking as the sun climbs. It’s the moment, he decided, when you’re no longer a child. When the concept of time and the need for more of it come together and make you powerless. Make you yearn for the longer days, the lazy days, before you knew what time passing actually meant.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“I would have kissed you if you were a girl. I would have kissed you if you were purple.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“He was a boy of air and dust and sunlight. Everything that had gone into the making of the world.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“It would be something, being in another place.'
A spark of an idea caught tinder. 'Where would you most like to go?'
'I don't know. I know nothing about the world. Enfield is my world.'
It was the saddest thing Dany had ever heard. 'How about this: when I come next time, I'll bring the world to you.'
Though he didn't understand, Colton looked interested. 'Is that possible?'
'Anything is possible'.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“Everyone leaves, in the end.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“Danny had never been so aware for anyone else in his life. Everything shrank from a universe to a pinpoint, every turn of the earth dependent on his next breath, each touch lingering until those eyes found his.
Colton pressed a hand to Danny’s chest and laid his mouth gently against his. Danny wasn’t prepared for it—the reminder that Colton was not like him, that his palms were smooth and free of flaws, that his wrist showed no veins, that his mouth tasted of copper and of sweet clean air.
He was a boy of air and dust and sunlight. Everything that had gone into the making of the world.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“To tea, without which I would likely be dead.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“The clock chimed five. It sounded almost celebratory as they stood there, hands clasped between them like the meeting of continents. Colton’s mouth was soft and warm, sunlight on silk. Danny was swallowing light. It dived down inside of him until he imagined it bursting out of every pore.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“I understand, a little, what it’s like.” She paused, her breath hanging before her in the cold. “People knowing something about you that’s invisible. The way they look at you, as if they can see it if they stare hard enough.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“It would fade in time, he hoped. But what was time to one who breathed never ending seconds, minutes, hours?”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“He punched the wall over and over until his knuckles split and bled. Until he could convince himself the tears on his face were from pain.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“It made the air heavy and the sky appear frozen, as if the town were being forced to slow down until the next hour.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“The Greeks love the idea of fate — in a completely morbid way, of course. Most of the stories of how people are trying to change or avoid their fate. But everything they do just brings them that much closer to it.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“London had been different. Everyone had been constantly moving, their eyes focused elsewhere, pretending no one around them existed.”
― Tara Sim, Chainbreaker

“For a moment, time started. It flickered into existence like a guttering candle.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“There are many branches of time reaching from your bodies—I can see them attached to one another. Humans call it fate, but it’s nothing so poetic as that. It’s simply time. Time, and the decisions you make as it passes, which in turn make history. When one decision becomes impossible, the thread snaps, leaving you fewer and fewer choices.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“He turned and ripped off the nearest clump of honeysuckle. He thought, coldly, that love was simply that—a handful of bruised flower petals. Beautiful and terrible and fleeting. Too easily snatched away, too easily ruined.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“Hopeless creatures, the lot of you.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“You’re the mechanic. I’m just the clock.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“They would be shocked if they could see the other women in London: automechanics with grease in their hair, fisherwomen in from te coast with tatooed arms.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“When Taesia pictured death, she no doubt thought of bones and rot, of dark soil and yellowed teeth in a weathered jaw. But when Risha pictured death, she saw old marble and hallowed ground, the shape of something beyond its original purpose. She felt the empty space of ceased breaths, of potential gone unfulfilled, and the smooth shape of finger bones tucked against her palm Death was lovely and sad, and never quite an ending.”
― Tara Sim, The City of Dusk

“Coming to my rescue?' she asked in her midnight voice. He watched her breathe, the way her ribs expanded with it, the way the shadows still clung devotedly to her, caressing her skin like a jealous lover. His lungs burned. His blood burned. He didn't know if he was staring at a killer of monsters, or a monster herself.”
― Tara Sim, The City of Dusk

“Danny liked to pass the time by imagining what circle of hell was reserved for each passenger of the Prometheus. Xavier was easy, the outer ring of the seventh circle where those violent against property were thrown into a boiling river of blood and fire then shot with arrows by centaurs. At least it provided Danny with pleasant daydreams.”
― Tara Sim, Chainbreaker

“Two o’clock was missing.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“Maybe one day he would understand. For now, this was between him and an absent god.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“He was the architect of their suffering.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“Every week the group seemed to grow more violent. It didn’t help that a rival group was starting to form as well — protesters protesting the bloody protesters. The two sides got into shouting debates that could be heard on the third floor. The arguments always amounted to the same thing.”
― Tara Sim, Timekeeper

“He had been groomed to hunt beasts and yet somehow, he had become a hunting ground, a land wrecked by tooth and claw and one woman's arrow tip pointed between his eyes.”
― Tara Sim, The City of Dusk

“An empty house had a particular sound, Colton had come to realize: a sigh made without lungs, the silent crawl of time passing with no one to measure it in beats of words and breaths. No one to speak to or listen to or watch. A loneliness that was cutting.”
― Tara Sim, Chainbreaker