Emily Austin > Quotes

“I start to picture a world where Jesus had been killed using a different murder device. I picture little ceramic guillotine figurines. I imagine miniature nooses hung above children's beds. Electric chair necklaces and earrings.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Do you ever think about how small we are? Do you ever think about space?" I ask her. "I keep fixating on dying, and thinking about why we exist, and how sad everything is. I've been starting to think that the only thing that matters is that people feel happy, and I was trying to spare you some sadness. I keep noticing so many people aren't happy, and it's been making me feel sick. I keep looking at everyone and thinking, Oh my God, I just want them to smile. I keep staring at peoples mouths. Do you know what I mean? I keep thinking, Oh my God, I just wish you were smiling—"

Rosemary nods. "Yes, I have thought about that too.” She looks at my mouth. "Now, do you ever think about how people might wish that for you?”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“I want to linger here in the in-between, half-made, in some permanent adolescence, forever. I don't ever want to become my full self.”
― Emily Austin, Interesting Facts About Space

“I decided that deep down we're all who we were when we were kids. I think being a teenager is about hiding all your quirks and contorting yourself to fit in and impress people, and being an adult is about re-finding who you were when you were eight years old.”
― Emily Austin, We Could Be Rats: A Novel

“I'm disappointed God is so homophobic that he forgot about lesbians, but I guess I would rather be forgotten than put to death.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“I am trapped inside this fragile body. I could be run off the road. I could be crushed by a van. I could choke on a grape. I could be allergic to bees; I am so impermanent that a measly bug could hop from a daisy to my arm, sting me, and I could be erased. Black. Nothing.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“When I think about the Catholic church, and about most religions in general, my theory is that they came to be as a solution to our existential dread. It's comforting to imagine that everyone who is dead is just waiting for us in the next room. It's calming to imagine that we
have an all-powerful father who is watching over us, and who loves us. All of it makes us feel like our lives have some divine meaning; it helps us feel happy.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“We are all just floating in space, okay? Think about it, we're just ghosts in skeletons, inside skin bags, floating on a rock in space. If there is anything that would make you feel happy to do, please do it.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“There is something soothing about being rejected. It really anchors you in your body. It feels like a bath.”
― Emily Austin, Interesting Facts About Space

“How is everyone doing tonight!" the singer shrieks into the crowd.

Amid the screaming replies, I allow myself to say out loud, "I actually haven't been feeling well lately.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Think about it,” I tell her. “If we discovered a dandelion on a planet besides earth, that would be astounding. The fact that dandelions exist on out planet is therefore astounding.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“That's nice that she's so happy, I think. It's nice that anyone is capable of happiness, really. It's amazing that the human body can produce the neurochemicals required to feel joy. I am disappointed to have been served so little of those chemicals- but I am glad nonetheless that this old woman has enough dopamine, and oxytocin, and whatever else she needs to sustain that smile - despite the fact that her husband is dead, her teeth are probably fake, and all human life is fundamentally inconsequential.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Other times I fixate on how endearing people are. We sleep on soft surfaces; we like to be cozy. When I see cats cuddled up on pillows, I find it sweet; we are like that too. We like to eat cookies and smell flowers. We wear mittens and hats.
We visit our families even when we’re old. We like to pet dogs. We laugh; we make involuntary sounds when we find things funny. Laughing is adorable, if you really think about it :')”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“My death, and the death of everyone I love, is inevitable.
Pine again.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“I wonder if anyone really identifies as the adult they've morphed into.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“She thinks I'm laughing at the movie, but I'm not - I'm laughing because I am endeared by her.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Why is this old man thinking about my appearance at all? Did he think that I would feel flattered by him exposing that he's spent part of our two-second interaction assessing my appearance, while insulting a dead woman's looks?”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“How am I supposed to uphold this facade as a Catholic heterosexual if I refuse to go to sushi with an Italian bachelor?”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“I am inside of an ecosystem I don't belong in... I feel like a foreign object inside a body, waiting to be rejected.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“I am trapped in this malfunctioning physical vessel.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Whenever someone does something nice for me, I feel intensely aware of how strange and sad it is to know someone”
― Emily Austin

“What if beneath every lawyer's suit and every stay-at-home-parent's apron, everyone is just a baby who doesn't know what they're doing?”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“I sit, a martyr for this child's happiness, while she draws with a red permanent marker all over my new cast.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“One day I am going to die," my internal dialogue asserts. That reality reverberates in my skull like a shriek in a cave. I am going to experience whatever it feels like for my life force to finish. Face it. Whatever animates my body will stop. Black. Nothing, That isn't just some alarming scary-movie fear; it's true. People will have to deal with my corpse.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“I once read that human beings can live solely on potatoes. A potato contains all the essential amino acids humans need to build proteins, repair cells, and fight diseases.
...
You would have to eat about twenty-five potatoes a day to get the recommended amount of protein, however, and you would have calcium deficiencies.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“Other times I fixate on how endearing people are. We sleep on soft surfaces; we like to be cozy. When I see cats cuddled up on pillows, I find it sweet; we are like that too. We like to eat cookies and smell flowers. We wear mittens and hats. We visit our families even when we’re old. We like to pet dogs. We laugh; we make involuntary sounds when we find things funny. Laughing is adorable, if you really think about it”
― Emily Austin

“The first girl I dated was named Cammie Anthony. She was a year older than me. She had failed eleventh-grade calculus and had to take
it again with my class.
The specific chemicals that are released when we have a crush are called norepinephrine, dopamine, and endogenous opioids.
I remember Cammie reaching to hold my hand in a movie theater.
We went to see a horror movie, and it was unclear if we were going as friends or on a date.
Norepinephrine is what causes our bodies to have sweaty palms and increased heart rates.
I remember lying awake in my bed texting Cammie until three in the morning.
Dopamine is energizing; it makes us feel motivated and attentive.
I remember every time my phone pinged with a text from Cammie, I felt happy.
Endogenous opioids are part of our reward system. It's what makes having a crush feel enjoyable rather than just crushing.
Oxytocin and vasopressin are the chemicals that make us feel calm, secure, comfortable, and emotionally attached to long-term partners.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“It’s ironic that a belief system theoretically created to help me feel safe and meaningful takes away one of the few things that makes me feel like my life is worth living at all.”
― Emily Austin

“Think about it, we're just ghosts inside skeletons, inside skin bags, floating on a rock in space. If there is anything that would make you feel happy to do, please do it.”
― Emily Austin, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

“We are all basically dead already in the grand scheme of things, and our feelings of sadness are pointless”
― Emily Austin