Gemma Amor > Quotes

“I had always felt things deeply, that was my nature. It was why I was a writer. Sometimes, the feelings were so huge, they needed a place to go.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“When had it become such a titanic, colossal struggle to simply exist as a normal, functioning human being?”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“​Sometimes, all you could do was give in. Sometimes, you just had to let the night win. Lose the battle, win the war,”
― Gemma Amor, Dear Laura

“Everything can change. A life can alter beyond recognition in the time it takes to simply let go of someone’s hand.”
― Gemma Amor, Dear Laura

“Pain is just an obstacle, she told herself eventually, through gritted teeth.  And obstacles are simply there to be overcome.”
― Gemma Amor, Dear Laura

“It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money,”
― Gemma Amor, Six Rooms

“People need something tangible to attach their grief to. There is no comfort to be taken from wide open spaces full of nothing.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“Because once a secret has grown old, and burrowed itself like a tick under the skin, it is harder to dig out than she could fathom.”
― Gemma Amor, Dear Laura

“Retrospect and hindsight are harmful things, in Justine’s mind. They are clubs with which to beat oneself when the world turns to black.”
― Gemma Amor, These Wounds We Make

“I gagged when I recognised it for what it was: a foot, attached to a leg, stuffed into the stocking like a goddamned candy cane.”
― Gemma Amor, It Sees You When You're Sleeping: A Christmas Horror Story

“Custom and indoctrination are one and the same thing,”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“And nobody much questioned her about it, because they knew she wouldn’t tell them anyway. She was mystery wrapped in silence, and sometimes, unwrapping the secret just wasn’t worth the struggle.”
― Gemma Amor, Dear Laura

“The absence of things is so loud it pierces my brain with loss. What used to be, is simply no more.
But the memories linger like smoke in the air.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“I feel like deep-fried shit on toast,”
― Gemma Amor, Girl on Fire

“seagulls at her back. Listen for them, and when you hear their cries, walk away as quickly as you can. Find a place, a crowded place, full of people and warmth and laughter. She preys on the weak and the lonely, the desolate and deprived. She feeds on your secrets, your dirty, precious little secrets.”
― Gemma Amor, Cruel Works of Nature: 11 Illustrated Horror Novellas

“I thought of my life, then, as a series of chapters in a book. I had finished the previous chapter, and it seemed to me, on reflection, as I stood here with the rest of my life in my hands, as if not much of any note had really happened in that chapter at all, despite the length of it.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“So this is what it’s like when someone you love dies, I thought. Like constantly trying to swallow a sharp stone.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“LITERA SCRIPTA MANET / VERBA LOCUTA VOLANT This was a question the Guide was actually happy to answer. He translated the phrase for them with relish. ‘Written words remain, spoken words fly away,’ he said.”
― Gemma Amor, Six Rooms

“An ant ran suddenly across her left big toe”
― Gemma Amor, ITCH!

“Because we are not the sum of our damaged parts, we are not the Bad Things that happen to us, we are not the weariness we feel as we push, push, push. No, we are mothers, we are sisters, we are wives, daughters, partners, friends, lovers, survivors, victors, we are brilliant, shining things, but we are also the shadows at the end of the bed, the eyes that gleam in the dark, we are alpha, the things with teeth and claws and hearts of hot blood, and we stand side by fucking side, as a pack, and you can hear us singing, if you listen.”
― Gemma Amor, We Are Wolves

“What you felt, my friend, is a redundant, bargain-basement version of fear, a type of fear that was easy enough to overcome: with rational thought, with a brisk walk, with a steaming mug of coffee, or a scalding hot shower. Breathe slowly, count to ten. Think nice thoughts. The type of fright that evaporated and retreated from memory the moment you opened your curtains and let the sun stream into your life. Are you shaking your head at me right now? Perhaps you think I’m being unfair. Maybe I am. Hell, the way the world has gone to shit in these last few months... it’s hard to imagine you haven’t seen enough to turn your brain into deep-fried calamari. I’ll speculate a little: by now, you’ve probably seen one of... them in the flesh, haven't you? One of the bugs, I mean. Up close. Well, what else would I mean? What else is there, these days, to talk about?”
― Gemma Amor, Cruel Works of Nature: 11 Illustrated Horror Novellas

“Jackson Barnes was a deep-fried, chili-flavored piece of shit through and through,”
― Gemma Amor, Six Rooms

“My recent loss was too fresh, too sharp. I couldn’t cut myself on the edges of it. Not again. Not right now.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“Why do you do this to yourself?’ He would have said. ‘Why do you let your thoughts spiral out of control in this way? What good does it do, to obsess over things like that, again and again? You’re just hurting yourself. What good does that do?’ No good. No good at all. But I didn’t know any other way to be. I didn’t know any other way of dealing with it. I had always felt things deeply, that was my nature. It was why I was a writer. Sometimes, the feelings were so huge, they needed a place to go.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“...and wondered why it was that she couldn’t cry, like normal people. Had she in fact died, years ago? Was she now just a ghost, a memory of a girl in pain, drifting, endlessly drifting, towards something indistinct?”
― Gemma Amor, Dear Laura

“They worked hard to maintain the life they’d built around themselves, forgetting, in the process, what that life was really supposed to be about.”
― Gemma Amor, Dear Laura

“She would do whatever the mystery man wanted, if it meant that she could find answers to it all. She was not too young to understand what closure meant. She was not too young to feel the agony of not-knowing.”
― Gemma Amor, Dear Laura

“As a woman I find a large portion of my time is spent pushing back, and yes, it can become exhausting, and I find my bones ache with it, sometimes.”
― Gemma Amor, We Are Wolves

“hide.”
― Gemma Amor, We Are Wolves

“Our capacity to minimise the severity of Bad Things is limitless, it seems. I wonder where that comes from, that instinctive need to gloss over the terror or the hurt, to pull the smile-curtains tight across our faces and upon questioning, lie, endlessly lie: ‘I’m fine!’ We say, over and over, but many of us aren’t. The lie pervades, the curtain hangs taut.”
― Gemma Amor, We Are Wolves