Lydia Kang > Quotes

“To be surrounded by books, by thoughts, by places and people and things that she had not yet met—it was a haven unlike any other.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“What's the meaning of life?"
"I have been programmed by Hexus to reply 'meatballs,'" it says.”
― Lydia Kang, Control

“Trust no one, I scold myself. Even if they smell good.”
― Lydia Kang, Control

“Somewhere in the world at that moment, there was a birth, a death, a sunrise, and a sunset. There was despair, and a burst of laughter, a promise broken, and a vow made.
And there was this kiss.”
― Lydia Kang, A Beautiful Poison

“All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dosage makes a thing not poison.”
― Lydia Kang, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

“But behind every misguided treatment—from Ottomans eating clay to keep the plague away to Victorian gents sitting in a mercury steam room for their syphilis to epilepsy sufferers sipping gladiator blood in ancient Rome—is the incredible power of the human desire to live.”
― Lydia Kang, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

“So long as I can learn about this precious, extraordinary, and occasionally heartless world, I can be content.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“It’s a dreadful vexation to be a shadow when you’re supposed to be the sun.”
― Lydia Kang, A Beautiful Poison

“Stories are how the world evolves.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Then there were antimony pills. Unlike our one-use pharmaceuticals today, these metal pills were heavy, and after passing through the bowels they were often relatively unchanged. They were dutifully retrieved from latrines, washed, and reused over and over again. Talk about recycling. The “everlasting pills” or “perpetual pills” were often lovingly handed down from generation to generation as an heirloom.”
― Lydia Kang, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

“Trust is essential when you're planning to lie to everyone you know.”
― Lydia Kang, Control

“Welcome to Aureus, land of illegal freaks. Have some torture and tea while you're here.”
― Lydia Kang, Control

“Forgetting is an act of survival. We are women, Mathilda. We endure to survive.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“If you're going to cry, go to church and pray for the living. The dead don't need your tears.”
― Lydia Kang, The Impossible Girl

“Though the element is no longer used in mainstream medicine, mercury has managed to slither its way into many a doctor’s office. It is perhaps oddly appropriate that the symbol for the god Mercury was the caduceus—two snakes entwined on a winged rod. The symbol is commonly and incorrectly associated with the medical establishment, due to a mistake when the US Army Medical Corps adopted the symbol in 1902. Soon after, it became a ubiquitous sign of healing. But in fact, the caduceus represents Mercury—the god of financial gain, commerce, thieves, and trickery.”
― Lydia Kang, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

“Defeat is particularly lethal early on in any journey; don’t let it be your compass”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Unfortunately, the theory that 'more is better' is a really, really crappy theory when it comes to arsenic.”
― Lydia Kang, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

“She had the sort of beauty that left you bleeding internally after gazing for too long.”
― Lydia Kang, A Beautiful Poison

“The clouds were a perfect white on turquoise. How rude of the sky to be so blue and pretty when Lucy couldn’t admire it. Such a thoughtless sky.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“If there was one thing that made humans uncomfortable, it was silence. They didn’t know what to do with it, except to fill it with words that gave away their inner thoughts—an arsenal of useful information.”
― Lydia Kang, The Half-Life of Ruby Fielding

“a funeral reminds you to be alive, doesn’t it? It slaps you across the face and points out that there’s still warm blood doing a jig in your veins.”
― Lydia Kang, A Beautiful Poison

“Funerals should be between a single person (dead) and a single person (alive) and ought to involve a discussion that no one else should hear. Should”
― Lydia Kang, A Beautiful Poison

“There were only so many pieces of your heart that could be damaged before it irrevocably changed you.”
― Lydia Kang, A Beautiful Poison

“For once, I'll be proud to be in the shadows.”
― Lydia Kang, Control

“redheaded victims’ blood was especially sought after. Weasley lovers of the world, look away. We beg you.”
― Lydia Kang, Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything

“Yaddle dropped her hands, and the two guards fell hard to the boarding ramp, a few meters away from Cippa.
'I choose to fight,' Yaddle said. She gently picked up Cippa with the Force, levitating her into the ship. As she passed the two guards, she said, 'That is what you get for shooting a child.”
― Lydia Kang, Cataclysm

“Personally, she didn’t believe in heaven or hell. An earthly life was hell enough, and heaven appeared in the ephemera of every day,”
― Lydia Kang, The Impossible Girl

“No woman lives a life unscathed. It’s what makes us strong. We are broken and mended, remade every time. We must, or it destroys us.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Humans needed meat and vegetables and desserts.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“As stars are born and die,' Creighton said, 'so does times move forward. Relentlessly so. And yet we fight. We will never stop fighting for light and life in this galaxy.”
― Lydia Kang, Cataclysm