Stephanie Kuehn > Quotes

“I am both ever evolving and ever decaying.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“She must have seen more of my charm than my strangeness tonight.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“From what I can tell, morality is a word. Nothing more. There're the things people do when others are watching and the things we do when they aren't.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“You have a history of starving yourself," he says gently.

I lift my head. I meet his gaze. "I have a history that I don't like to talk about.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“No we talked about matter- most notably quarks, those tiniest possible components of everything.They come in six flavors, you know: up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange. I'll admit those talks helped me, and when i read about the sea quarks, I understood why. They contained particles of matter and antimatter, and where the two touch exists this constant stream of creation and annihilation. Scientist call this place "the sea," and it's what pitches inside of me as I hurry away from Mr. Byles, ignoring his furrowed brow, his worried frown.
I am of the sea.
I am of instability.
I am of harsh, choppy waves roiling with all the up-ness, down-ness, top-ness, bottom-ness contained within my being.
I am of charm and strange.
Annihilation.
Creation.
Annihilation.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“Because blood is blood, and every family has its own force.
Its own flavor.
Its own charm and strange.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“She loves us all."
"Then why doesn't she act like it?"
"Because love doesn't always look nice.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“Choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“I'm trying to reach the stars.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“You wanted to live," he says.

"You say that like it's a good thing. A virtue."

"What is it really?"

I think about this. "Selfish."

"Wanting to live is selfish?"

"Yes.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“There are some dreams you can't wake up from.
Ever.
These are called nightmares.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Complicit

“There's this mood I can get into sometimes. It's hard to explain. I don't know how to describe it other than to say I feel sort of dead - faded, really, or reduced, like there's less of me or I'm not as much of myself. It's as if I've forgotten who I am or who I'm meant to be or if I'm really even anything or anyone at all.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, When I Am Through with You

“And yes, I say, I do like girls. I don't pursue them, though, and there are a lot of reasons for that. It's gotten me in trouble before, but I also think I have ridiculously high standards because the whole dating, fooling around thing seems so complicated. And not in a good way. I hate obligations, and if you want to be with a girl, it's like you're expected to do certain things. And do them a certain way.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“There are some dreams you do wake up from, only to find you can't remember them at all. But that doesn't mean these dreams don't matter...
These are dream that hold our most private of truths.
These are the dreams that destinies are made of.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Complicit

“They had it all wrong, of course. Bravery wasn't required to conquer fear. Indifference was.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Delicate Monsters

“When there are things about yourself you can’t change—no matter how much you might want to and no matter how hard you try—it sort of throws your ideas about free will and agency into chaos. Not being able to control oneself is a far different experience than bumping up against outside obstacles that aren’t in one’s power to change. But our own thoughts, our feelings, our actions—those are the things that make up our internal existence and fundamentally define who we are. If we can’t control what makes us us, what hope is there for finding agency anywhere else in our lives”
― Stephanie Kuehn, [Don't] Call Me Crazy

“It's the story that was too big for me to tell, the one that grew to fill the depths of my being and the far corners of my mind. It's how I lost my system of meaning.
But I haven't lost everything.
Somewhere, somehow, adrift in the sea and far from the stars, I've found faith.
In myself.
And that makes all the difference.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“An ambulance came. Then a cop car.
When pressed harder about it, I cried. A lot.
Howled, really.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“Hurting people wasn't all that different, though. That was also a form of taking and she did it all the time. Sometimes she wished she didn't. Sometimes the things she took were unforgivable and she'd give anything to have better control over herself. Then again, sometimes Sadie was bored. And oftentimes, that was more than enough.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Delicate Monsters

“...More than looking, what we're really doing is gazing, and we do it for so long I start to get the feeling that nothing else matters.
It's a good feeling.
Better than good.
It's one I could get lost in.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Complicit

“it's strange how loving someone can make them feel worthless.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, When I Am Through with You

“You're like my sun in winter.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Complicit

“But maybe he'd always known. Maybe the cool winds of fate and the flag-snap flutter of destiny had always been there, tickling his spine, whispering in his ear it's gonna catch up with you boy one of these days the truth'll come back so you'd better go go go, until finally, Emerson couldn't help but listen. There was only so much ruin the mind could rationalize. There was only so much badness that could be suppressed for so long. His guilt, on its own, was utterly meaningless - just a showy type of magic that changed nothing because changing nothing was the endgame all along. Words like absolution and forgiveness and redemption would never apply to someone like him. Those terms were just abstractions. Names for what other people called the moments between darkness.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Delicate Monsters

“It's the story that was to big for me to tell, the one that grew to fill the depths of my being the far corners of my mind. It's how I lost my system of meaning.
But I haven't lost everything.
Somewhere, somehow, adrift in the sea and far from the stars, I've found faith.
In myself.
And that makes all the difference.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“she was acting like everything was fine. But fine can so often be the very worst of feelings.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, When I Am Through with You

“This school devours privacy, and rumors are like drops of blood in an ocean full of predators.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Charm & Strange

“Was it possible to fall so far from greatness? Was this, then, his destiny?”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Delicate Monsters

“Somewhere. somehow, in the near future, Miles knew, some of them would be winners, some losers, and others, like himself, would be asked to fall on their swords.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Delicate Monsters

“Maybe there were times when suicide made sense. When the immoral choice is moral. Emerson could believe that. But his father was no Walter White. He hadn't been terminally ill or struggling with addiction or living a dual life where he'd accrued huge gambling debts that he couldn't pay off. There'd been no sacrifice in his actions. Only weakness. And his pain, however deep it had been, hadn't disappeared with his death. He'd simply passed it on to those who'd loved him. That's what really got to Emerson. The selfishness of it all.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Delicate Monsters

“She is fucking beautiful, and she is utter madness.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, Complicit