Rachel Harrison > Quotes

“I’d learned quickly after leaving home that family is an inevitable part of conversation, especially if you volunteer to work holiday shifts as often as I did. I also learned that when you tell people you’re estranged from your family, they always assume it’s your fault. They assume it’s on you that you don’t get along with the fam, that it’s a character flaw. They see it as a red flag. Even if they, too, are estranged. There’s so little empathy and understanding when it comes to family, the cornerstone of society, the root of existence.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“How can anyone know when ruin wears the disguise of love?”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“One thing I’d learned out in the world was that nobody’s so different. We all buy toilet paper, contemplate the ply. Request help at self-checkout because something always fucking goes wrong, doesn’t scan. We all spend too much money at Target, stand there in the parking lot going through the receipt, brow furrowed. We forget to take our vitamins, to take out the trash. We microwave leftovers. Set our alarms. Waste time on the internet. Forget our passwords. We worshipped gods of our choosing.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“You're so beautiful," he says as he kisses along my clavicle, one hand loose around my neck and the other moving up my thigh. "You're so beautiful."

But I need him to love me ugly.”
― Rachel Harrison

“Heard from whom? I always hated this small-town-grapevine nonsense. That's something I love about the city. The anonymity. No one knows who you are, and no one gives a shit about your business. It's a beautiful thing.”
― Rachel Harrison

“It was her coping mechanism - tying ribbons over open wounds.”
― Rachel Harrison, The Return

“I had been out of sync with myself earlier, with my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Maybe it'd happen again. Or maybe there was another version of me hiding in the walls of the house, the ghost of my former self, forever trapped in a shitty childhood.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“The poor starve. The rich ask, Why are you hungry? If you were just like me, you wouldn't be hungry. They have their portraits done. Let history remember the rich. Let their houses stand. The castles to visit. The videos of celebrities giving tours of their multimillion-dollar homes for Architectural Digest while wearing pins in honor of war-torn countries that are really to say, I would give none of this up for them. Wait. Wait. Wait to see which pale man has the most eager fingers. Who presses the button first? Who presses it next, in retaliation? Boom! Nuclear annihilation!”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I always imagined rage to be a red, chaotic state. But it's quiet and translucent and euphoric. A sister to freedom.”
― Rachel Harrison

“It’s a cruelty of life that we can never protect our own innocence. We can only watch ourselves lose it in retrospect. Scream at memories.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“It's strange to be near him again. I imagine it's like returning to your childhood home as an adult. The comfort and nostalgia eclipsed by the distortion of the dimensions. You remember it being bigger than it is. Because you're bigger than you were.”
― Rachel Harrison

“The rage wraps itself around me like vines, like moss swallowing a rock. It's a natural state. It's good. It's symbiotic.”
― Rachel Harrison

“What is it about a woman in full control of herself that is so utterly frightening?”
― Rachel Harrison

“He was patient with me. We were virgins. We never had sex. I saved that for someone meaner.”
― Rachel Harrison

“Because I like to meet other strange creatures. Good to know I'm not alone.”
― Rachel Harrison

“I'm in the mood to make pie. Would you like to come over and make some pie?”
― Rachel Harrison

“I empathize with the binding of this 15 year old paperback, in how it's struggling to keep it all together.”
― Rachel Harrison

“My eyes close, and it's here. The transcendent knowledge that nothing can touch me. That I'm not in danger, because I am danger.”
― Rachel Harrison

“Why were they so willing to believe in something so ridiculous? To shirk science and logic for imaginary idols?”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“The emotion was, in retrospect, a warning.”
― Rachel Harrison

“She seems like one of those people who are born knowing exactly who they are. Her entire personality written in the stars, set in concrete. - Cackle”
― Rachel Harrison

“Maybe it wasn't about the number; maybe it was about the symbol. Infinity. Maybe because there were infinite questions to ask, maybe because wonder was limitless. There were so many variables so many unknowns.”
― Rachel Harrison

“Baphomet acted as a sort of Hell's Gate mascot, like Gritty for the Flyers. Just as creepy, less fuzzy.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I hoped wherever she was, she was having a shitty time, had an itch in a place she couldn't scratch.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I want to put my ear to him and listen as if he were a seashell.”
― Rachel Harrison

“I turn away from my reflection and step into the shower. I turn the water all the way hot, then all the way cold. I wait for my fists to unclench, for my spine to unwind. I wait to calm down.

I don't think it's going to happen for me. It's one of those days. My mood has been ordained. I'm a wretch.”
― Rachel Harrison

“What I do know, what I've learned the hard way, is that we don't get to choose our parents or the circumstances we're born into. We can't change our blood. But it shouldn't determine our fate. It doesn't. We still get to choose who we are, who we want to be.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I prodded at my emotions with a long stick as if they were something dead in the woods. I interrogated myself. Are you sad? Are you angry? Are you disappointed? Heartbroken?”
― Rachel Harrison

“I saw a future where I didn't spend my days obsessing or feeling bad about myself. In that future, I was someone else. Someone who looked nothing like me.”
― Rachel Harrison

“I'd go on to reject it all, sure, but it was still part of me. When you're young, you just absorb your surroundings. Absorb, absorb, absorb like a tiny, stupid sponge, and then your bones grow around it, skin stretches to fit it.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep