Alison Rumfitt > Quotes

“Sometimes, at the end of everything, the only option you have is to make it worse.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“Are you a bad person, or do you just have reasonable concerns, are you a bad person, or are you just asking questions? In the crushed heat death you ask how to win a culture war, and when does a culture war become a real war, where is the line that is crossed, is it the spilling of blood and has blood already spilled? It must be a war to be called a war.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“This tower/factory is haunted, like all workplaces, haunted by the people who have done these same mechanical actions, made the same mechanical statements, cried in the disabled toilets in the middle of every shift, haunted by the feet of every person who has climbed this tower before I have, trying, desperately, not to look over their shoulder, but knowing that there is no escape because the tower doesn’t go on forever and it doesn’t lead to anywhere else.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“Every spot on the planet has something in its past that is worth haunting about.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless

“And the world comes crashing down around them. Maybe they'll be okay. Do you think they'll be okay, in the end? I think they will be. I have to think they will be.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless

“Fascism, like desire, is scattered everywhere, in separate bits and pieces, within the whole social realm; it crystallizes in one place or another, depending on the relationships of force. It can be said of fascism that it is all-powerful and, at the same time, ridiculously weak.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“I don’t really allow myself to get close to people on an emotional level because my insides are all riddled with maggots, which is very frightening for people to see, especially up close, especially when they are, you know, inside you, in more ways than one.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“YOU [that is, the reader, not the character] are welcome to take a break here given the extremity of the content explored in the next series of chapters. It isn’t shameful to take a break. It is in fact encouraged that you do so right here, so that this novel does not become overwhelming to you. Take a break, get a cup of tea or some water. Maybe go for a walk. Then come back and continue reading, safe in the knowledge that you [the reader] have fortified your constitution and thus can handle what follows.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Brainwyrms

“I have to know that there are people who would understand if I talked to them. I have to know. I have to believe that my trauma is relatable, if controversial, that there are people who would listen to me and go, it’s okay Alice, it’s completely okay. You are so fucking normal. Everything you’ve experienced is normal.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“Every spot on the planet has something in the past that is worth haunting about. Or if, miraculously, it does not, then there’s always the future, which holds far worse for everyone. It haunts backwards.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless

“Just because Biden won in America, that doesn’t mean all will be right. It’s worse now than ever. Now it is time to panic.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“Sometimes, the world is so pointless and cruel, that the only logical, sane response is to tear out one’s eyes.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Brainwyrms

“The world outside is dark and unknowable. In the room you are safe. You are subject to violence, abuse, mistreatment, hurt, pain, all of the above, but you are safe from what is outside the room and that is what matters, inside the room is the pain you know, outside the room is the pain you do not know, it’s not a hard choice to make in the end,”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“I don't want to hide all the bad things away beneath my bed like a kid asked to tidy his room. Like the British Empire.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless

“There are some who immediately feel safer, knowing that the House is there, and there are some who do not. For someone to be comfortable, another has to be uncomfortable. For someone to feel safe, another has to be unsafe. And the one who is safe may not even be safe, they may just feel safe, up until the moment they don’t. For someone, the majority, to prosper, another has to … well. I think you understand what I am saying, and why.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“I've been privy to something. And I can tell you, it's going to get worse.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Brainwyrms

“He can still see the shapes. He can still see the damp forming wide white eyes, and a twisted screaming mouth, and in that mouth the impression of a tongue and of teeth. It keeps him up at night. In his dreams, the shape becomes clearer, becomes a woman, and the screaming woman, her limbs all bent at strange angles around her, pushes out through the brick, through the paper, tearing it away to reach out into his bedroom and grab him.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“I'm not drunk yet, I had a couple of glasses of red wine sat on my bed listening intently to Darkthrone and trying to calm my nerves, but it hasn't hit me”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless

“Fascism, like desire, is scattered everywhere, in separate bits and pieces, within the whole social realm; it crystallizes in one place or another, depending on the relationships of force. It can be said of fascism that it is all-powerful”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“The kind of gratefulness that one subjected to violence may have towards a different source of violence.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Brainwyrms

“I thought I forgave you, Ila my love, but I’m not so sure. Now kiss me hard on the mouth.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless

“I give her a smile that appears shy but that we both know really isn’t. I don’t really allow myself to get close to people on an emotional level because my insides are all riddled with maggots, which is very frightening for people to see, especially up close, especially when they are, you know, inside you, in more ways than one. But I try to fuck well.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“It feels like an anecdote that was meant to describe something, a metaphor about late capitalism, hauntology, about how work turns us all into ghosts, repeating the same learned actions over and over again for eternity. For that person, the wonder and the possibility and the horror of a haunting was just, in the end, somebody else doing their job for them.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“they never found fulfilling or honest work, they just simply kept climbing until one or both of them was dead. Climbing a tower is unskilled work.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless

“Sometimes, at the end of everything, the only option you have is to make it worse”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless

“She was killed right away, the lucky bitch. Cis girls are always spared the worst of the pain.”
― Alison Rumfitt

“I've been privy to something. And I can tell you, it's going to get ”
― Alison Rumfitt, Brainwyrms

“The most famous haunted places in the world tend to be the big houses and castles, because rich people lived in them and the collective blood on their hands, the collective violence that they caused on everybody else in the world, manifests into ghosts. Ghosts are born from trauma and violence.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless

“This is what we have lost. We have forgotten how to do this, that we even have the power to do it. When homosexuality was legalised, many decided they no longer needed to, and the memory became just that, a memory. Then not even a memory. A story. A vague idea. A metaphor.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Brainwyrms

“I turn to my right, to see a window. Outside, the world is a great white expanse. I climb up, clumsily, onto the window ledge. I peer up out and see that above me, the tower stretches up still further, but I can see its point. And below me, I can see the ground. I can see a garden of beautiful flowers. If I jump, my body will fall into that garden and decay. I will be eaten apart by worms and little insects. I will be fertiliser.”
― Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I’m Worthless