Mallory Pearson > Quotes

“Saz loved The Craft, so we usually watched it at least twice every fall, when Finch’s list of gory horror hits was too much for the group to sit through.”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“It was hard to remember what things had been like before Sofia disappeared, before everything started to disintegrate. Frankie’s easy laugh had slipped from her memory. Cass’s grasp on Poppy was thin as a fistful of water. Whatever the four of them had once been was a childish invention, a prayer for a lasting link left unanswered. Cass had expected them to grow up together, to attend each other’s weddings, to hold each other’s hair as they puked into toilets and to raise their kids like some kind of queer commune. They had been that way all her life—closer than sisters. Soul-bonded. No one knew her like her women. No one would ever see into her like them, past the walls of her heart.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“Floorboards buck like teeth in a freshly punched jaw.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“She was not strong enough. She would never be good enough to make them safe. But no one had ever thought better of her for being the best at hating herself.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“Will you love me forever? Even if I’m worse one day?”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“She was nervous with them all gathered in the little space she’d carved out for herself, but they didn’t seem to mind the places where she had shoved dirty laundry into piles for later sorting, or the fat crack in the shower tiles, or the understocked refrigerator, fruit all rotten and forgotten. They settled in like they were welcome. And they were. For the first time, she wanted to show them that internal part of her world.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“There could be beauty here, too, even if it hurt to see, hurt to feel. The studio was at its most peaceful when the sun peaked overhead and filtered past the hills. The shelves of porcelain illuminated, dust particles momentarily transformed into vivid flakes of gold before they settled once again. She studied the place on the floor where the stretched-out shadow of Lyon Ceramics staked its claim. In that still second, everything floated by on its usual track, without the sense of impending doom Frankie had grown accustomed to. While the gold light danced, the world was not ending, the world was not ending, the world was not ending.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“They weren’t my family. They didn’t watch me shift and change, didn’t know me in my most vulnerable time and still love me in the end.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“And Poppy was suddenly so grateful that she’d always been accepted by them and she’d always accepted them right back, so thankful that they’d found each other and the ties between them were the unshakable kind, the redeemable kind, the understanding kind of soul bond that couldn’t be erased.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“I mean, we can all agree that bleeding on hamburger meat is not the same thing as murder, right?”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“She would never trust them again. She would never trust anyone for as long as she lived. But what did she have if not them?”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“It had been this way with her for years, a sadness so profound that it hollowed into preemptive hurt, her mind inventing new ways to strike at the soft animal of her heart.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“She could leave. She could go with the family she’d built for herself, and she would learn how to believe them again, and she would become someone worthy of giving their trust to.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“Could a house hold that? It was all just energy—clinging, sticky, material. Could the shape of a structure remember the hurt administered within it?”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“I don’t get why eleven eleven is supposed to be so lucky,” Saz continued, as if Caroline hadn’t spoken at all. “Seven thirty-seven is where it’s at. It’s such a good fucking time, you know? It feels so solid. Satisfying.”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“Caravaggio, Francis Bacon, Hieronymus Bosch, Francisco Goya, Henry Fuseli.”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“We just need to keep at it. Don’t give up so easily,” Marya added, lips quirking just slightly. “The world has several corners and a hundred faces. Maybe we’re just looking at the wrong one.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“But sometimes you can’t know how empty that desire will feel until you’ve already lost it all.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“All I’ve ever had is time to think,” Fiona said, “and you can see so much when you adjust to the dark.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“Nah, he’s being tortured by Cenobites in the Hellraiser dimension. He’s kicking it with that one who has big nasty teeth.” “Chatterer. Get it straight.”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“Sofia gave herself to a boy she thought she was supposed to love, because she couldn’t understand any other way out of her own life, and in the process she left her heart behind.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“I couldn’t believe how old I was and how fucking young I felt. It was like playing at adulthood, ignoring all the ways we ought to grow up.”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“So we actually need his spit—or hair, or snot, or blood, or urine. I’m sure you can think of a few more options.”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“Everything tasted like static.”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“When did I stop wanting to go home?”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“There were Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, Sally Mann and Cy Twombly, Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh, Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan, Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet. Friends, yes, but tragedies too. They were close but painfully critical, and many of them grew apart.”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“Do you know how old the world is, Frances?” Sissa asked. “Do you know how ancient magic is? How big and blue and bright? It’s endless. We are pinpricks in its timeline, grains of wheat in a giant’s silo.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“A series of us coming together over, and over, and over. A life crafted from the spaces in between us. All the shapes we made out of shadows and all the light we ferried with us.”
― Mallory Pearson, Voice Like a Hyacinth

“It was easiest to follow someone when you loved them, and even when it seemed like the world might be ending, even when years of tension had split them down the middle like a sloppily sliced fruit, Poppy loved Frankie undyingly. Once, she’d loved Sofia like that, more than that, with a natural affection. Loved her still, with a kind of reverence that terrified her.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark

“Besides, what else are you going to do? Sit on your ass at home?” Alex had planned on sitting on his ass at home.”
― Mallory Pearson, We Ate the Dark