Katy Simpson Smith > Quotes

“Children, even the most shy and tongue-tied, spill all their vibrancy out into the world. There are no reserves, no deep wells where emotion sinks and is buried.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“I've never done a thing as great as made a man, but were I your silent God, I'd sob to see my creations split themselves asunder.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Everlasting

“In the night he dozes and wakes, and wonders what leaving means.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“The thought of her body having a purpose was natural and pleasurable, but the purpose that was proposed–spitting out another human, and having a foreign object stuck into it along the way–seemed inadequate. To be poked into and pushed out of, like something static, something without legs, without a brain.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Everlasting

“She has begun to understand that her life is small, and she cannot accept smallness.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“If she began now to doubt, if she studied unhappiness rather than duty, she might find her own life vulnerable.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“When he laughs, she wants to swim into him. She knows that his pleasure is not in her dream’s absurdity, but in its aptness.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“She used to think it was in one's bearing, that if she carried herself like Leonor of Toledo, with leopard steps and unblinking eyes, no one would have the room to question her. But even the whitest woman was blacker than a man.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Everlasting

“The water crowded with microscopic action, with bloomings and sex and feasts.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Everlasting

“When folk die, it’s just their bodies. There’s something inside that stays alive always.” “Our souls,” Tab says.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“shoulder and thanks her. “I’m almost sorry you two didn’t run off after all. I think it might’ve been just the thing for her.” “It seems this town won’t let people go,” he says.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“There are ghosts of the dead and ghosts we create from nothing, just to have the company.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“She eats with punctilious grace, dabbing her mouth occasionally, her back straight, her elbows light, as though she were sitting before a sheet of music.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, Free Men

“People want what isn’t given to them. And this is not sin, but hope. What if God didn’t put us here to accept, but to struggle? Isn’t love itself built of that precise impossible hope?”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“Moll does not think of herself as a demonstrative mother. She does not heap praise upon her children; her attentions are aimed at keeping them out of trouble. Her son and the daughters that trail after him like stepping stones are still young, not yet caught in the violence that will become mundane. But what she would tell her son, if she could find the words and if he would sit still enough to hear them, is that he is the reason she still exists.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“Bodies are weak, just flesh and bowels. Men should be surprised that they live at all.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“There is something unprotectable about a boy. The journey he makes, to life or death, is simply the one he forges.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“You have claws and teeth and a roaring heart.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Everlasting

“In the absence of the beloved, there is new space for guilt and should-have-dones. Regret only exists once the opportunity for change is gone.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“She swung the net idly through the stream, steering clear of the lines, but the glory was in the hook. A fish caught up in her little net was a lazy one, too dumb to know better, while the perch that fell for the well-threaded worm was a noble foe. Struggle was good; passivity was weak. Except when the opposite was true, as in the case, sometimes, Jesus, and in the case, all the time, of women.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Everlasting

“When did a human first consider her own beauty? [When another human first denied it. Cf. Adam re: Eve. I, the snake, was the soother. Ask your questions; I, Satan, am the answerer.]”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Everlasting

“If there is joy in life, it lies in patience, in watching the Lord’s creations unfold.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Story of Land and Sea

“[I find myself at your feet. Child, listen: you won't find a man worthy of you in heaven—I've been there.]”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Everlasting

“You can't demand love. Not expect it, not wait for it, not want it. It comes on air like a scent.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Weeds

“Feeling wronged quite easily stands in for confidence.”
― Katy Simpson Smith, The Weeds