Amy Zhang > Quotes

“She wished to be happy, and fell asleep with an entire sky above her.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Because Liz Emerson held so much darkness within her that closing her eyes didn't make much of a difference at all.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“I wish second chances were real.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Liz looked back and counted the bodies, all those lives she had ruined simply by existing. So she chose to stop existing.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“She was tired. Gravity pulled at her more aggressively than usual. When she closed her eyes, she could feel it, dragging her deeper, deeper. I would have pulled her back. I would have saved her from falling, but she didn’t see my hand.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“We wonder what lies beyond.
One day, she will grow up and imagine death as an angel that will lend her wings, so she can find out.
Death, unfortunately, is not in the business of lending wings.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Gravity is our playmate, momentum is our friend. We are blurs of motion. We are racing, and we are both winning, because we do not race each other. We race the world, and as fast as it rotates, as fast as it revolves, we are faster.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Well, hello, darling with the ocean eyes,
How many secrets keep us apart?
A sea of poems, a field of sighs,
Can I cross and return to the start?”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“She wanted to go back. She wanted to be a little girl again, the one who thought getting high meant being pushed on the swing and pain was falling off her bike.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Funny things, aren't they? People. They only believed in what they could see. Appearances were all that mattered, and no one would ever care what she was like on the inside. No one cared that she was breaking apart.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“She would be an object in motion that would stay in motion, even if it meant flattening everything in her path.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“But there was something terrifying taking over her thoughts, and it wouldn't leave. Out of seven billion sharing the planet with her, not one of them knew what was going through her head. Not one of them knew that she was lost. Not one of them asked.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“I would have pulled her back. I would have saved her from falling, but she didn’t see my hand”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“It is then, when she releases her need to understand, that everything falls into place.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“She had been desperate to feel something, anything. She needed a window, because she had broken her heart throwing it at locked doors.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Miracles do not belong to religions. Miracles belong to the desperate, which is why every religion, every philosophy, and most importantly, every fairy tale always has a moment of salvation, a eureka, an enlightenment. We are all chasing and chasing tails, running and running in circles, until a wolf or the witch or the stepmother jumps out and trips us, and we fall flat, splat, and we lie bare and bleeding and breathless and finally, finally look and see whatever it is---salvation or eureka or enlightenment or a hunter or prince or a glass slipper---in front of us. And that's what miracles are. Not solutions, but catalysts. Not answers, but chances.”
― Amy Zhang, This Is Where the World Ends

“it’s never too late to change. Every day is a blank page, and your story has yet to be written.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“She lives in a world made entirely of sky.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Drowned out by the sound of his heart throwing itself against his ribcage.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“It struck him that perhaps she thought just as many
thoughts in a minute as he did, felt just as many emotions,
inhaled and exhaled just as he did. And it was
then that he began to fall in love with her for the second
time, for the same reason that he had picked up his flute
again: because he believed in broken things.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“He is very much in love with Liz Emerson,and it seems that she will never know.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Liz was afraid of silence, and she kept her fears clenched so tightly in her fists that they grew and grew and swallowed her whole.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“No one sees how her hands shake as she closes the magazine, lays it down gingerly as though afraid that her trembling will start an earth quake, and make the entire world crumble.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“There's more to life than cause and effect.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“And suddenly, it’s very clear to her that every action is an interaction, and everything she has ever done has led to something else, and to another something else…”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Her mother's words echoed through her head: love you. People threw them around so easily, as if they were nothing, as if they meant nothing.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“How many times can a person explode?”
― Amy Zhang, This Is Where the World Ends

“Inertia, force, mass, gravity, velocity, acceleration. . .cause and effect.

Liz Emerson doesn't understand any of it.

But I do.

I understand how we fall. Where we fall. Why we fall.

I understand her sadness and loneliness and silence, her shattered heart.

It doesn't have to be this way, does it?

It wasn't always this way, was it?

Stay alive, Liz Emerson, stay alive.”
― Amy Zhang, Falling into Place

“Miracles do not belong to fairy tales. Miracles belong to the desperate, because only the desperate believe in bullshit.”
― Amy Zhang, This Is Where the World Ends

“He is rainwater and smoke and wishes. He is honey and wind and bitter as truth and sharp with hurting and endlessly, unbearably sweet. He is air, finally, endlessly”
― Amy Zhang, This Is Where the World Ends