Betsy Cornwell > Quotes

“Those of us who embrace the feminine know its strength.”
― Betsy Cornwell

“It's the colors that will make you stray. They sing to you, the not-blue and the searing light, and no matter how tightly you tie yourself to the inbetween, eventually you will break free.
No one swims only in the shallow water.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Tides

“Where once I prayed for forgiveness from a father God who held up huge palms and said “Thou shalt not,” now I find peace with a sister god who takes my open hands in hers and says, “You will.”
― Betsy Cornwell

“But unlike sirens, selkies don't mean any harm with their songs. They don't sing to seduce or to kill. Their songs have nothing to do with anyone but themselves. They sing for the simple joy of it, and because of that, I imagine their songs are more beautiful than those of any siren.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Tides

“Everything was a broken line for me in those days. I was slipped into the empty spaces between words.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“Children’s and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we get. I think that’s why so many adults read YA: we’re never done coming of age.”
― Betsy Cornwell

“When your heart is broken, it’s easier to follow rules”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“I brought my hand to the back of his neck and leaned into him, sliding my fingers into the curls at his nape. His arms clasped tighter around me. I sighed just a little against his mouth, feeling that it was almost too much, all this newness, this feeling that there was space and light inside me I’d never noticed before. Every part of me down to my fingertips felt like reworked glass, melting into some new shape, my edges beginning to glow. I wanted to do nothing but change this way, pressed against his body, his warmth and goodness, forever.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“I had rescued myself entirely.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“The love between friends could create life.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“I have to believe it’s right to be a warm voice, a companion if I can be, as soon as ever I find a friend.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“you had to be willing to forget what it had done before and look for what it could do.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“I do the same with my books...Nothing like a good argument in the margins with someone who's already said all they have to say on the subject.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“My motrher says friendship should be slowly and carefully cultivated, like a rose garden, like a romance in a story. That every reason you care about someone should be rational.

She says I care too quickly.

But friendship has never been somenting I could do halfway”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“...if someone doesn't care whether you live or die, then living itself is rebellion.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Forest Queen

“Once you love someone, part of you is bound forever. Perhaps you never see him again - perhaps your life is better without him, and it's right to be apart. But once you've loved him, the link is formed. You can ignore it, if you choose, but you cannot sever it.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Tides

“A whole life could change, and change again, in the smallest fraction of forever.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“Now was a time not to anger, but for survival. I would survive. I knew that was all I could do.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“Why do you think, when women tell the stories of their lives, they end with marriage? It is not a happily ever after, cherie, only the end of happiness?”
― Betsy Cornwell, Reader, I Murdered Him

“We're not soldiers," I said. "We're just trying to keep everyone alive, and fed, and free."

Ghazia laughed. "What is that if not rebellion, when those who rule you want you hungry and indentured?”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Forest Queen

“When you write, your words survive even your death.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Reader, I Murdered Him

“The cracks grew over him like vines, faster and faster. At first he bucked, whinnying metallic screeches. Then he gradually stilled, looking up at me with frightened glass eyes.
He was growing.
New, molten glass leeched out between his fissures, cooled and hardened only to crack again and make room for more liquid glass. The gears inside him moaned and creaked, and metal filings gathered at the base of his transparent stomach, only to fly up again and form more joints and chains and gears. Black smoke poured from his nostrils.
Soon he was the size of a large dog, then a man, and still he grew and grew until he towered over my bed, as big as any plow horse I’d ever seen. Glass dripped down his flanks like sweat, a few rivulets still glowing with molten heat.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Mechanica

“I’m so grateful to you that it’s hard for me to think about it. That I don’t think about it. But I should . . . you gave up everything . . . And I’ve never even thanked you.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Forest Queen

“And no memory is ever quite as you left it, no matter how carefully you lay it away.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Circus Rose

“If you study something for one year, all you find out is how many things you don't know.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Circus Rose

“[…]what was most important was asking her what she wanted, rather than telling her I felt I knew it.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Forest Queen

“We were three people who loved and needed one another, and it was as easy, and as hard as that.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Venturess

“But you're in Faerie now, Nick, and everyone in this place sees you three for what you are.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Venturess

“Shared, the pain was double, but only half so crippling. She couldn't bring herself to wish for the strenght to stand alone.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Tides

“Some people think that men are drawn to younger girls because of the beauty of our youth, but ever since I’ve known that I admire women, I’ve also known this to be untrue. I have never in my life seen a woman who was at her most beautiful before the age of twenty-five; I doubt I ever shall. Men like young girls precisely because we are young. We are moldable still in a way that grown women who have formed their own opinions are not.”
― Betsy Cornwell, Reader, I Murdered Him