Ilsa J. Bick > Quotes

“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.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“They call it the drowning instinct. It's when drowning doesn't look like drowning.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“Follow your heart. Just don't get lost.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Draw the Dark

“It was that stages-of-anger thing. I was shocked and then I got pissed and then I fought like hell … and then I went numb. They called it acceptance, but it wasn’t. It’s what happens when you have only two choices: live with the monster, or kill yourself.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“This is a fairy tale with teeth and claws.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“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.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“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.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“But sticking to rules just because they're there does not make them right. You need to learn when the rules should be broken.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“What's the point of not taking chances? I don't know if I could stand living my whole life afraid.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“They call it the drowning instinct. It´s when drowning doesn´t look like drowning. In real life, if the water´s very cold, a person can´t help but gasp. It´s reflex. The thing is as soon as water hits your lungs, your throat closes off, even it the water´s warm. Your body´s trying to protect itself, and the reality is that a lot more people suffocate than truly drown. Regardless, to people on land, especially when you´re really close to the end, you don´t look like you´re in trouble. You don´t scream, but that´s because you can ´t, and you don´t wave your arms either or expend a lot of energy flailing. You´re just there. So people don´t notice that you´re drowning. That´s me. I think I´ve been drowning all this time and doing it so quietly, even I didn´t know it.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“She's got the kind of ethereal, unselfconscious beauty some young girls possess that breaks your heart. Or theirs.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“We all have our fictions, little lies we tell ourselves to keep going from one day to the next.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“Sometimes you don't know what you need until it's gone”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“We were like matching bookends, almost touching but with volumes between us and stories, so many stories.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“So I need the story, Jenna. I need the truth.
Right, like the two are the same thing.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“That´s the problem with the truth.
Sometimes the truth is ambiguous, or really bad cliche.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“No one can help but stare at the monster, because horror is a cousin to awe.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Monsters

“Run, she told herself. Run, you idiot, run.

But she didn't. She couldn't. She just... couldn't.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“Those brain-zapped kids weren’t the only - or maybe even the worst - enemy.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“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.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“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.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“Because if you can just hold off the moment when you must confront reality, time stands still and you can keep pretending that life will continue as you´ve known it: that nothing-not even something as wonderful and as terrible as love-has broken your world beyond repair.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“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.”
― Ilsa J. Bick

“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.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“I am a ghost in a land of phantoms and forgotten nightmares.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Draw the Dark

“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.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Ashes

“For that matter, my heart is broken. So maybe they´ĺl give me his. It´s something to shoot for.
And maybe, in all that, Bob?
There is forgiveness...”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“What you couldn't see and only imagined was always scarier than what was real.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Monsters

“People drown, quietly, before our eyes, all the time.”
― Ilsa J. Bick