Michelle Cuevas > Quotes

“You rarely know, in the moment, when it's the last time you'll do something. Most of the time, the whole thing just sneaks away in the night, never to be seen or heard from again, not even sending back so much as a postcard to say hello.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Beyond the Laughing Sky

“The truth is...you're only as invisible as you feel, imaginary or not.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“Sometimes imaginary troubles are harder to bear than actual ones.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“Change is the nature of nature,'" she read. "'For example, stars expand as they grow older. They grow from a star, to a red super-giant, to a supernova. When a massive star explodes at the end of its life, the explosion dispenses different elements-helium, carbon, oxygen, iron, nickel-across the universe, scattering starduest. That stardust now makes up the planets, including ours.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Beyond the Laughing Sky

“Where mermaids live looks a bit like your pool.' said Bernard. 'Except they build houses out of whale bones and the wreckage of sunken ships. They play chess with seahorses. They wear capes of fish scales and sleep on beds made from seaweed.'

As we listened, I thought I heard a slight splashing from the far end of the pool.

'At night,' Bernard continued, 'they turn on an electric eel for a night-light, and they light a fire, and the smoke goes up a chimney made from coral.'

'Wait a minute,' interupted Zoe, clearly immersed in Bernard's description. 'If they live underwater, how could they have a fire?'

'You should ask them,' said Bernard.

Zoe and I open our eyes.

Now, look, I know the light was just playing tricks on us. And I know we'd all probably inhaled too much sequin glue. But for the briefest moment, the blue of Zoe's pool gave way to deeper, darker aqua-colored water. The few plants and rocks were replaced with a lagoon and a waterfall where several mermaids lounged half in the water, half in the sun. They splashed and dove, their laughter making the same sound as the water.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“Yimello,' said Bernard finally, breaking the silence.

'Gesundheit?' I asked.

'It's a name for one of the colors that's invisible to us. Yimello," said Bernard. "There could also be glowl and novaly and replitz."

'Yes.' I nodded, stunned the kid could actually string together so many words at once. 'And, uh, don't forget the beautiful grynn, the luminous dulloff, or the subtle winooze.'

Bernard's face lit up. He stood and started pacing the room, speaking quickly. 'Or salty, and insomnia, and carefree, and talkative, and lonely, and burnt, and punctual.'

'Some of my favorite colors,' I agreed, nodding. 'We could paint this room whisper. Or zigzag. Or maybe a nice shade of ignored and invisible.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“The most glorious works of art, the ones that bring the purest joy – perhaps they need not be touched or known, but seen only with the heart.”
― Michelle Cuevas, The Masterwork of a Painting Elephant

“Cloud root beer floats and moon grilled cheeses. But their favorite food is stardust.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“It's like the stars in our constellations that we made," you said. "Even if one star dies far, far away, its light is still visible, and the constellation it helped to make remains. A thing can be gone and still be your guide." He took my hand. "You know what I would say in any situation, what advice I would give, how much I'll always believe in you. That belongs to you. That love. And no one can touch it, or alter it, or take it away. It will live in you your whole life. Who knows, maybe longer.”
― Michelle Cuevas, The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole

“Maybe what I'd thought was my superpower was actually just this: I was finally able to see that nothing was simply good or bad, that everyone contained multitudes, and that I, like anyone, was a beautiful, swirling, chaotic galaxy of all the things that had ever happened to me.”
― Michelle Cuevas, The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole

“I guess that's what pain can do if you allow it: crack you open, let light in, and show you what's on the inside.”
― Michelle Cuevas, The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole

“It turns out that it's possible, if you are careful, to feel all the feelings that come with having and caring for a black hole, but to still not be consumed by it. I was, I realized, no longer afraid-- not of this darkness, or any other.”
― Michelle Cuevas, The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole

“things like how to tell the age of a tree, the dances of the moon and tides, and the names of the clouds-like cumulonimbus and nimbosttratus-that sounded lie magic spells on his tongue.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Beyond the Laughing Sky

“He saw the kind of beauty yellow flowers have growing over a carpet of dead leaves. The beauty of cracks forming a mosaic in a dry riverbed, of emerald-green algae at the base of a seawall, of a broken shard from a blue bottle. The beauty of a window smudged with tiny prints. The beauty of wild weeds.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Beyond the Laughing Sky

“She read about dreams made of sunlight and plums, and dreams made of ice; dreams that glowed in the dark, dreams made of unwound fingerprints, dreams that flew away like a lost kite string.”
― Michelle Cuevas, The Dreamatics

“This, I thought, was why the bees and birds landed on him--he clearly had a whole world inside him with rivers of honey and a heart made from flowers. Bernard was just like a closed bud, an acorn with a tree inside, a song yet to be heard.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“It's like a nesting doll of imagination! It's like a painting of a painting! It's like the wind catching a chill from the wind, or a wave taking a dip in the ocean. It's like reading a novel that merely describes another novel. It's like music tapping its foot to a tune and saying 'Oh! I love this song!”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“They are forever looking into the nooks and crannies of a thing, whatever the thing may be. Always up very early or very late, going for rides on the backs of whales who deliver the mail; waking up covered in a secret language of hums; writing about the hobbies of feathers; changing shape like a cloud; howling at the moon; being a radioactive night-light in the dark; being a life raft on an ocean of alphabet soup; being great-hearted; being selfless; believing in tall tales, doodlebugs, and doohickeys. Believing. Believing in themselves. Believing in you.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“A place where a clock's minute and hour hands spread away from its face, flapping like wings. A place where he'd pluck a daisy and watch the petals whirl like the propellers of a helicopter. Where he'd throw a handful of sand, and the grains would buzz away like a swarm of gnats. Where colorful fruits on a tree would burst into flight, and new ones would perch in their place.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Beyond the Laughing Sky

“Jacques wants a pancake shaped like Mozart's Symphony No. 40! In G minor!”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“You're only as invisible as you feel, imaginary or not.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“Like an octopus, we contain several hearts, one to keep, some to walk around outside us”
― Michelle Cuevas

“Found in trees. Sometimes also in old silent movie theaters, seaside zoos, magic shops, hat shops, time-travel shops, topiary gardents, cowboy boots, castle turrets, comet museums, dog pounds, mermaid ponds, dragon lairs, library stacks (the ones in the back), piles of leaves, piles of pancakes, the belly of a fiddle, the bell of a flower, or in the company of wild herds of typewriters.
But mostly in trees.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“The ocean at sunset, a sea of honey holding wax ships sailed by bees”
― Michelle Cuevas

“To tell the truth, I was beginning to think you would be in awe of anyone if you saw the parts of them that no one else gets to see. If you could watch them making up little songs, and doing funny faces in the mirror; if you saw them high-fiving a leaf on a tree, or stopping to watch a green inchworm hanging midair from an invisible thread, or just being really different and lonely and crying sometimes at night. Seeing them, the real them, you couldn't help but think that anyone and everyone is amazing.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“The missions were always changing- sometimes collecting jars of rain, paper bags of hiccups, adopting lost moonbeams and folding them into cake batter. Or perhaps investigating glittering slug trails left in the moonlight, finding the owners of abandoned buttons, or playing the sousaphone for caterpillars still in their cocoons.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Beyond the Laughing Sky

“He happened to be an especially deep sleeper. When Turtle slept, he slept the sleep of a broken pocket watch.”
― Michelle Cuevas, The Town of Turtle

“Dar ce am eu special? m-am intrebat. Presupun ca nu poti sa-ti dai intotdeauna seama de lucrurile astea de unul singur. Poate pentru ca esti prea aproape, ca o floare care se uita in jos si crede ca e doar o tulpina.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend

“The fort.
Where the pair stored their painted scenes and books of made-up languages, their two-man band, and the tiny matchbox bed plus accessories that they made in case, someday, their experiments in the world of shrinking finally panned out.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Beyond the Laughing Sky

“YOU TURNIPHEADED, SLUDGELY, GORMLESS, BIFFLING, MANDRAKE-BRAINED, FLABWINKED FOOL!!!”
― Michelle Cuevas, The Dreamatics