Maria Dahvana Headley > Quotes

“I read stuff. Books are not my only friends, but we’re friendly. So there.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“If you look at the sky that way, it’s this massive shifting poem, or maybe a letter, first written by one author, and then, when the earth moves, annotated by another. So I stare and stare until, one day, I can read it.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“I'm dark matter. The universe inside of me is full of something, and science can't even shine a light on it. I feel like I'm mostly made of mysteries.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“Death is the Santa Claus of the adult world. Except Santa Claus in reverse. The guy who takes all the presents away.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“Because every time someone finds a new animal, or a new amazing thing on earth, it means we haven't broken everything yet.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“You hold no horrors for me”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“Yes, I’m a reader. Kill me. I could tell you I was raised in the library and the books were my only friends, but I didn’t do that, did I? Because I have mercy. I’m neither a genius nor a kid destined to become a wizard. I’m just me. I read stuff. Books are not my only friends, but we’re friendly. So there.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“I {} you more than [[[{{{}}}]]].”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“We are made of awkward.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“I can't imagine a universe in which I try to unlove her.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“I like the sky. It's rational to me in a way that life isn't.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“I know everyone has dreams of flying, but this isn’t a dream of flying. It’s a dream of floating, and the ocean is not water but wind.

I call it a dream, but it feels realer than my life.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“Did he just say stormsharks? My inner nerd is elated. Can anything I will ever hear from now until the end of time sound cooler than stormsharks?”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“I don't think of the sky as any kind of heaven item. I think of it as a bunch of gases and faraway echoes of things that used to be on fire.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“Life and death aren’t as different from each other as I thought they were. This isn’t like walking into a new country. This is like walking into a new room in the same house. This is like sharing a hallway and the same row of framed family pictures, but there’s a glass wall between.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“Looping. Some days are so dark I can't see anything but a miserable fog of number after number, word after word, clouds of verbs and nouns and none of them the ones that will make time go backward.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“Even people who've never seen a miracle can believe in miracles.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“Listen,' someone whispers into my ear. 'Listen to me.'
Am I dead?
'Listen,' the voice whispers. 'In some countries, you kill a monster when it's born. Other places, you kill it only when it kills someone else. Other places, you let it go, out into the forest or the sea, and it lives there forever, calling for others of its kind. Listen to me, it cries. Maybe it's just alone.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“People never think, until it happens to their place, that all construction is destruction. The whole planet is paved in the dead, who are ignored so the living can dig their foundations.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“The world isn't large enough for heroes and monsters at once. There's too much danger of confusion between the two categories.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“There's a long tradition that says women gossip, when in fact women are the memory of the world. We keep the family trees and the baby books. We manage the milk teeth. We keep the census of diseases, the records of divorces, battles and medals. We witness the wills. We wash the weddings our of the bedsheets.
We know everything there is to know, and we keep it rolled into the newel posts, stuffed into the mattresses, smuggled inside our vaginas if it comes to that. Women's clothing is made without pockets, but we come into the world equipped”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“No one needs to see us for us to exist. No one needs to love us for us to exist. The sky is filled with light.

The world is full of wonders.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“I was a protestor. I was such a protestor that I regularly protested things that might have been good for me.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Year of Yes

“Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings! In the old days,   everyone knew what men were: brave, bold, glory-bound. Only   stories now, but I’ll sound the Spear-Danes’ song, hoarded for hungry times.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf: A New Translation

“We know this much is true,   and it’s true for all souls: each of us will one day   find the feast finished and, fattened or famished,   step slowly backward into their own dark hall   for that final night of sleep.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf: A New Translation

“And there's the loudest sound I've ever heard and the brightest white I've ever seen, and I'm made of it, I'm-
I'm made of light
I'm made of heat
And I'm flying”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“I was becoming convinced that I was going to be lonely for the rest of my life. It wasn't that I wasn't meeting men. I was. It was just that they all drove me crazy.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Year of Yes

“I call death onto those who don't know a child when they see a child. Men who think they made the world out of clay and turned it into their safe place, men who think a woman wouldn't flip the universe over and flatten them beneath it. I have enough bullets for all of them.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, The Mere Wife

“You’ve never seen surprise until you’ve looked into the eyes of an ascending bovine.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia

“It felt like she took off running without me. Her fingers clenched in on mine. Then relaxed, like she'd lost all her bones.”
― Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia