Alisa Alering > Quotes

“She knows that if you want something too badly, you get hurt. But if you can deny yourself, you’re protected.”
― Alisa Alering, Smothermoss

“Plucks the hairs that grow under her arms one by one with a pair of tweezers. Each hair she extracts has a slim black bulb on the end like a stem of wild garlic.”
― Alisa Alering, Smothermoss

“I choose.

I didn't say it works the way I want every time. That doesn't mean I'm not choosing. I'm still the one holding the pen. I'm still the one carrying the cards.”
― Alisa Alering, Smothermoss

“There isn’t much you can count on in life, but most of the time, things stay where you leave them.”
― Alisa Alering, Smothermoss

“So the mountain doesn’t notice when those ragged membranes let leak something that has been sealed for a long time, when some shard of natural chaos combusts into being. Doesn’t notice when, on her other side, some volatile, neglected aspect, both new and old, breaks free of its underground bonds and pops out into the daylight world.”
― Alisa Alering, Smothermoss

“There’s more kinds of things in this world than men and ghosts.”
― Alisa Alering, Smothermoss

“Men pretend to be worthwhile at first; they buy you a drink and hold the door and help you into your coat, and a little bit of dark honey runs through you at all the attention, but then quick as a flash, the whisperer of sweet words turns into a thing that sits on the couch and farts and picks his teeth and ignores you unless he’s shouting for a beer.”
― Alisa Alering, Smothermoss

“In her own dreams, when she tries to imagine other places, other futures, the picture won’t come clear. Her view is blocked by a dense white fog. Beyond that thick smear is the place she wants to get to. She doesn’t know where it is or what it looks like. Only that it’s not here, and not this.”
― Alisa Alering, Smothermoss