Meg Smitherman > Quotes

“Our knowledge is so minute, a tiny droplet in a vast sea that never ends, and we had the audacity to think we knew what we were getting into.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“I feel the vastness at my back like a loving nightmare, tendrils of it wrapping around my ankles and throat until I’m inevitably lost to it. I keep imagining the cosmos wrenching me off the ship, dragging me deep into itself, and I am a prisoner there forever, eyes wide, my screams soundless in the vacuum.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“He wants to keep me here, he wants all of me, my body, my mind, my soul. He wants to hurt me, to own me.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“He is painfully familiar, as achingly real and right as the breath in my lungs, the blood rushing through my veins. He holds out a hand. I go to him and take his fingers in mine, willingly, achingly. Finally.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“Ami,” he groans. “I’ve waited so long for you.” I don’t know what that means and I don’t care. Maybe I’ve waited for him too. I came all this way, light years and light years, and I found him. Why shouldn’t I surrender to this?”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“I’m both adrift and trapped like a rabbit by a fox. And he is the fox, shadowed in dusk.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“It’s just an illusion,” I accuse him. “Not a real plant at all.” “Your fingers touched it,” he says, black eyes shining. “You smelled it. The touch and smell pathways in your brain recognized it as a living thing. Does that not make it real?”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“No matter how many times you try to go, you always come back.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“I’m in his arms before I have a chance to stop myself. He is my only comfort here, the only warm thing, the only embrace. And in my terror, as the hum invades my senses, I’m desperate for him. He takes me in as if he was born to hold me, enveloping me with arms around my body and a cheek on the top of my head, my chest against his, our heartbeats hammering in tandem.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“But the fact is that the biological makeup of a human brain is too simple, its neurons too few, to understand the true enormity of our universe. It is incalculably and emphatically beyond us.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“I’m a woman with a ship and a dead crew. With ghosts clinging to my heels, tripping me up. A pink comb in my pocket that shouldn’t exist. An alien man, whispering in my ear. A whisper I'm afraid won't ever let me go, no matter how far I flee.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“The knife of this truth lodges in my ribs. We stare at one another, the crimson room pulsing all around us.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“We killed Earth. Millions of us died, wiped out in horrific weather events, from starvation, or from exposure in the massive deserts that bloomed in the Great Heating Event. And worse, we killed each other, ravaged the land with bombs, no longer concerned with preserving humanity, let alone the environment. There was nothing left to save.”
― Meg Smitherman, Swallowed

“I’m seeing things that aren’t there. Nothing here is real.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“He owns me, and I hate it.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“The crew of the Pioneer has been dead for a long time. I’m the only one left. We made it to our destination, and I’m the only one left.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“When you think about breathing, you forge a connection with yourself. When you control that breathing, the connection grows stronger. And you begin to find peace.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“Thrum, thrum, thrum. My bones vibrate with the sound. It’s embedded in me now. A parasite, unseen, clinging to my nerves. Holding my heart in a web of forceful thread.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“Eros and I lock eyes. He raises his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth twitching. “We do share some traits,” Eros admits. “We both love gazing melodramatically out windows.”
― Meg Smitherman, Entity

“My name is Dorian Gray.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“How am I meant to argue against him, against a being who sees something utterly different than what I do? We’re two living things, both made of flesh and blood, but our realities are light years apart. What does this ship look like to him? Am I even holding a comb and a pencil, or are my hands empty? Nausea rises in my belly at the thought.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“Ami,” he groans. “I’ve waited so long for you.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“I want to know more. I want him to lay himself bare to me. I want to chart his nervous system, count his lungfuls of air, unfurl his DNA one strand at a time.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“I am part of it, made whole from it, completed by it. By him. And I am not afraid. I am safe. I am home.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“But once I’m safely inside Pioneer, the door sealed closed behind me, Dorian’s voice caresses my brain. I hear him as clearly as if he’s standing right next to me, soft lips brushing my cheek. No matter how many times you try to go, you always come back.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“Your fingers touched it,” he says, black eyes shining. “You smelled it. The touch and smell pathways in your brain recognized it as a living thing. Does that not make it real?”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“She was simply a woman.”
― Meg Smitherman, The Frost Queen's Blade

“Then the door is closing, clicking shut, and I’m alone in this room that was made just for me. A simulacrum of quietude.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“A scream or a sob begins to work its way up my throat. I don't want to let it out; I'm afraid that if I do, something will hear me and silence me with gentle hands, and I will be lost forever.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum

“I’m fine, I want to lie. Come back, I want to beg, even though I’m the one who moved away, who put this chasm between us.”
― Meg Smitherman, Thrum