M. L. Rio > Quotes

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
― M. L. Rio

“There's a kind of passion particular to the written word which stays fresh long after the ink or even the writer's veins are dry. You could call it the sacred duty of the reader to keep that spark alive.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“...here's the thing about lust: you don't have to like each other.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Les acteurs sont, par nature, instables ; des créatures alchimiques composées d’éléments explosifs… l’émotion, l’amour-propre, la jalousie. Quand on les chauffe et qu’on mélange, il arrive qu’on obtienne de l’or. Et parfois… un désastre.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Actors are by nature volatile--alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“make art, make mistakes, and have no regrets. It would a shame to waste such brief mortality.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“J’ai besoin de langage autant que j’ai besoin de me nourrir. Les lexèmes, les morphèmes, tous ces petits éclats de sens m’alimentent en me montrant que oui, il existe un mot pour dire cela. Que quelqu’un d’autre a déjà éprouve la même chose.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“I am myself indifferent honest," I admitted. "But yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us.”
― M. L. Rio

“Il n’y avait que nous : nous sept, les arbres, le ciel, le lac, la lune, et bien sûr, Shakespeare. Il vivait avec nous comme une huitième colocataire, un ami plus vieux et plus sage. Toujours loin des yeux, mais jamais loin du cœur, comme s’il venait tout juste de quitter la pièce. Grande est la force de la divine poésie.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“We were always surrounded by books and words and poetry, all the fierce passion of the world bound in leather and vellum.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“I leaned heavily on the balustrade, trembling under the weight of parallel truths that I had, until then, been able to ignore: James was in love with Wren, and I was blindly, savagely jealous.”
― M. L. Rio

“His arm fell lifelessly by his side. He looked away and said, "Oliver, I don't know what's wrong with me. I want to hurt the whole world.”
― M. L. Rio

“I've never understood that speech. I mean, I understand it, but it doesn't make any sense. After trying for so long to settle the score and restore some kind of order, suddenly Hamlet's a fatalist.”

“Nothing makes sense to him either. His whole world is falling apart, and once he realizes he can’t stop it or fix it or change it, there’s only one thing left to do.”
“What’s that?”

❝ Absolve yourself. Blame it on fate. ❞”
― M. L. Rio

“Other nights, when he thought I was already dreaming, he slid out of bed, took his coat and shoes, and disappeared into the dark outside. I never asked where he went, worried he wouldn’t ask me to follow.”
― M. L. Rio

“I felt her sigh, and when she breathed her sadness out, I breathed it in.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“James left broken league, and I felt something deep between my lungs crack clean in two.”
― M. L. Rio

“He was silent for a moment, then asked, "Does it make you happy?"
"Sorry?"
"Does it make you happy?"
I opened my mouth to respond- yes seemed the only possible answer- but then I closed it again, uncertain. I cleared my throat and spoke more cautiously. "I won't pretend it's not difficult. We're always working and we don't sleep much and it's hard to have normal friendships outside of our sphere, but it's worth it just for the rush we get, being onstage and speaking Shakespeare's words. It's like we're not really alive until then, and then everything just lights up and the bad stuff disappears and we don't want to be anywhere else."
He sat inhumanly still, keen gray eyes fixed on mine. "You paint a very good picture of addiction.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“You can’t quantify humanity. You can’t measure it—not the way you mean to. People are passionate and flawed and fallible. They make mistakes. Their memories fade. Their eyes deceive them.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“This,” James said, when he had disappeared. “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars … as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting-on!”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?”
The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can’t suppress a smile. “I blame him for all of it.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“Riconosco come mio questo essere delle tenebre.”
― M. L. Rio

“They looked at each other, stared, indulged, and I followed their eyes, saw what they saw—the line of James’s jaw, the triangle of smooth skin visible in the V of his collar. The backs of his hands, the delicate bones, precise as lines carved by Michelangelo. And Meredith—the soft clamshell pink of her mouth, the curve of her throat, the slope of her shoulders. The tiny mark I’d left with my teeth on the heel of her palm. Anxiety flickered through every nerve in my body.”
― M. L. Rio

“Last night, I couldn’t sleep, so I reread Twelfth Night,” Wren said. “We all know how it ends—happily, of course—but there’s sadness there, too. Olivia has lost a brother. So has Viola, but they handle it very differently. Viola changes her name, her whole identity, and almost immediately falls in love. Olivia shuts herself away from the world, and refuses to let love in at all. Viola is trying desperately to forget her brother. Olivia is maybe remembering him too much. So what do you do? Ignore your grief, or indulge it?” She looked up from the sand and found us, gaze drifting from face to face. Meredith, Alexander, Filippa, me, and finally James. “You all know that Richard refuses to be ignored,” she said, speaking to us, and no one else. “But maybe every day we let grief in, we’ll also let a little bit of it out, and eventually we’ll be able to breathe again. At least, that’s how Shakespeare would tell the story. Hamlet says, Absent thee from felicity awhile. But just awhile. The show’s not over. Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight. The rest of us must go on.”
― M. L. Rio

“But maybe every day we let grief in, we’ll also let a little bit of it out, and eventually we’ll be able to breathe again.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“The kick drum pumped like a Tell-tale Heart.”
― M. L. Rio

“He should have been dumber. Anybody that good-looking deserved to be dumb.”
― M. L. Rio

“James laughed brokenly, and I felt something deep between my lungs crack clean in two.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“The future is wide and wild and full of promise, but it is precarious, too. Seize on every opportunity that comes your way and cling to it, lest it be washed back out to sea.”
― M. L. Rio, If We Were Villains: A Novel

“We had, like seven siblings, spent so much time together that we had seen the best and worst of one another and were unimpressed by either.”
― M. L. Rio