K. Ancrum > Quotes

“If you drop the weight you are carrying, it is okay. You can build yourself back up out of the pieces.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“I never said I didn’t feel the same,” Jack said harshly. “Just because I don’t see the kingdom doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist,” Jack said furiously. “As long as one of us remembers it, it still counts. We decide the end of the game, not them. Not anyone else. You’re so stupid, August. You’re so stupid and I love you so much.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“Diversity is a flower that blooms with greater beauty and greater strength each time it is cross-pollinated.”
― K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars

“All that I am is a terribly brave small thing, with a terribly brave small life, and a terribly brave love that spans eons.”
― K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars

“Ten million light-years from now
bathed in the radiation of a time without time
are the bones of a girl who loved Ryann Bird.

In the dust left over from our supernova
atoms spread farther and wider than hope
are the pieces of the heart of the girl who
loved Alexandria the Great.”
― K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars

“Love is not about holding people where you want them. It is about doing what's best for them because you need them to be okay.”
― K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars

“He wanted Jack's clawlike fingers back on the nape of his neck. He wanted it to hurt so he could still feel it later. He wanted it so bad he could hardly breathe.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“I love you and we don’t need the other world to keep that.”

He glanced at the small window in the door to see if the guard was watching, then leaned over quickly and pressed their foreheads together.

“It’s just true,” he said. “It always has been. In this world and the next. They could take everything away and leave us with nothing, and I would still love you.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“My mom once told me that being alone makes you feel weaker every day, even if you're not." he said quietly. "But it's not as bad if you're with other people who are alone, too. We can hold each other up like a card tower.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“There are so many books written about the weak learning to be strong and not many about the strong opening themselves up to weakness and vulnerability.”
― K. Ancrum, Icarus

“Jack kissed him so carefully that August thought he would fall to pieces. Kissed him with the weight of knowing the price of risk. Then he gazed back at August like his heart was already breaking.

It was the same face that Jack had made on the roof, in the middle of the night, when they rolled in the grass, when he sat back with August’s blood and ink on his hands, when his face was lit orange with flames, when he’d opened the door to Rina’s room, when he stared across the gym at the homecoming dance, when he pulled him from the river and breathed him back to life.

Jack had been waiting. He’d been trying. He was scared. There were tears in his eyes and it took August’s breath away.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“But your best is not good enough sometimes.”... “Sometimes… you have to stop trying and just let someone else try their best. In order to survive.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“Do they Still sing songs of my victory?” August choked.

“They do. And they’ll crescendo like beacons to the farthest reaches. With every new breath of life that forms in a world without darkness that came at the price of your hands and your mind.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“And suddenly, with a jolt of horror, he realised that he couldn't live without it anymore. It was as much a part of him as anything now. He couldn't run from it any more than anyone could run out of their own skin. It would just keep coming back, over and over, curling up out of him, growling like hunger.
He would crave the burn until he was dead.
August curled up against the wall and put his head in his arms.
He gripped the lighter so tightly that his knuckles went white.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“I was yours before we even met and I’ll be yours until we die.”
― K. Ancrum, Icarus

“You deserve to heal and grow, too. You deserve to have someone to talk to about your problem; you deserve unconditional support; you deserve care and safety and all the things you need to thrive. Just because you may not have them doesn’t mean you don’t deserve them. If someone tells you that you don’t deserve those things, they are lying. Keep trying your best. Ask for help when you need it. Do your best to be brave, but it is okay not to be. If you drop the weight you’re carrying, it is okay. You can build yourself back up out of the pieces. If your mind stops listening to you, it’s not your fault. There are billions of us; you are not alone.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“Love is never a sin, and the rules of men who don’t understand that don’t matter.”
― K. Ancrum, Icarus

“You think I’d know art, and not know this?” Icarus said. He pressed closer, still. “There have been men like you before we had words for it.”
― K. Ancrum, Icarus

“There is a difference between being nice and being kind. Being nice is about being polite. It gets the job done, clean and orderly. You are nice to people you don't know in the store buying groceries, or to a kitten you find under a car in the winter. It is doing what you should, when you're supposed to and how you're supposed to, when the time is right [...] Being kind is different. Harder. It means doing what is best even when the cost is high. It's saying something that hurt and hurt and hurt right now, so it wouldn't have to hurt ever again.”
― K. Ancrum, The Legend of the Golden Raven

“Every story has many sides, depending on where you're standing when it happens.”
― K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars

“He had failed. He had failed in every possible way with every possible choice he had ever made. Jack was still crazy. He was alone. And he was in a prison of his own design. The embarrassment and regret were choking him from the inside out, and all of a sudden he was screaming.
It started small, but it bubbled bigger every minute. Rising black and ugly through the veins in his feet, up and up, bursting his cells and filling his lungs, encasing itself around his bones and finally spilling from his eyes, tacky like tar. It tumbled from his mouth in a howl of rage so deep it shook his teeth. The hairs rose on the back of his neck.
It was a shout of pain so pure and hot, he could have sworn it was burning out his eyes.
And then, like a living nightmare, his howl roused the other patients to noisemaking. Like a battle cry. It soared above the symphony of their screams of confusion and fear, the banging on the doors and the weeping. Soared above all. A phoenix that burned and fell to ash before it could set alight the room at the very end of the hall where the dreammaker lived, imprisoned by his visions. Unanchored and unnoticed in the dark.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“Helios stopped talking and stared up at the ceiling. ‘I’ve always been a disappointment.’ Icarus couldn’t say that Helios wasn’t, he couldn’t say it was going to be okay because he didn’t know if it would be, he didn’t have a paragraph of loving words that he’d rehearsed the way Helios did. He only had the truth. ‘I want you anyway.’ Then, softer, ‘I’ll want you still, all the same.”
― K. Ancrum, Icarus

“Is anything 'just' anything? After all these months? Even dressed in my colors? Even with your favor at my feet? Even as the sky falls and the only thing I can hear besides your voice is the screams of the dying and the thundering of horses?”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“I was made for you; I was born for you, and you’re still standing before me acting like you’re not worthy.”
― K. Ancrum, Icarus

“Where we are, there is light.” The wind blew hard from the east and the trees rustled their branches. “From where I’m standing… it is warm enough.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“Four light-years from the second largest pulsar, past the black dust and the white. In a small circle of golden light, made by a careful teenage star, I found you," Aexandria said seriously. "No matter what I did or said, there you stood. Like a fixed point, and the Earth moved around you.”
― K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars

“Fighting for yourself is another way of loving yourself.”
― K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars

“August’s heart seized.

He didn’t … know he could have this.

Jack kissed him so carefully that August thought he would fall to pieces. Kissed him with the weight of knowing the price of risk. Then he gazed back at August like his heart was already breaking.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King

“They don't want the danger, and the darkness and loneliness," Alexandria interrupted softly. "They want the heat and the light, but they don't want radiation."

Roland closed his mouth and looked at Alexandria with indescribable pain and indescribable fondness.

"The stars have weight," Alexandria finished. "And my little life wasn't heavy enough to outweigh your want of it.”
― K. Ancrum, The Weight of the Stars

“I remember the attic of your house. The way the sun shone gold through the slats in the windows. The dust on the floor and the crowns we wore. I remember your throne, the Wicker Throne, and mine, the Wooden Throne. I remember sitting on them, hands clasped between us. You were always the better king.”
― K. Ancrum, The Wicker King