Erika Killen > Quotes

“He is often remembered as the great lover who braved the underworld. But that is the flattering version. The crueler version is that Eurydice is asked to follow him out without explanation, without reassurance, without being told why trust has become the only bridge between death and life.”
― Erika Killen, After the Last Sunrise: Book One of the Last Sunrise Trilogy

“I would want more years with you. I would hate the danger required to get them. I know what it is to watch someone I love grow old while I do not. I also know that those years were still worth having.”
― Erika Killen, A Distance Measured

“You may need another position one day. You may wish to enter a shop without someone deciding your reputation before you speak. You may wish to refuse me and not have half the county tell you that refusal came too late.”
― Erika Killen, A Distance Measured

“I have watched language discard words I loved. Every private memory eventually becomes history, and people begin asking you to correct the footnotes.”
― Erika Killen, The Roads Beneath Blackthorne: A Fallow County Novel - Book One

“What happens if your name disappears?” she asked.

Nikolai’s eyes remained on the page. “I become difficult to remember.”

“And after that?”

“I become difficult to remain.”

Graham looked between them. “Remain what?”

“Anything,” Nikolai said.”
― Erika Killen

“The dead did not always stay buried. Sometimes they came back in old letters, in family trees, in names scratched from ledgers by hands that should have rotted centuries ago.”
― Erika Killen, The Hollow Heir: Book two of The Blood Archivist Series

“Reagan tucked herself closer against him. His arms closed around her. For once, the records stayed closed, the dead stayed quiet, and the blood did not command. It answered only to the living. And Reagan, foolishly, beautifully, let herself believe morning would be kind.”
― Erika Killen

“Callum smiled faintly. “She said, ‘If one more man mistakes cruelty for tradition in my presence, I will put his name somewhere even his ancestors won’t find it.’”

Reagan nearly choked on her coffee.”
― Erika Killen, The Blood Archivist: Book One of The Blood Archivist Series

“On the handwritten title page, someone had scraped away several lines of ink so thoroughly that the paper had thinned beneath the blade. Objects were rarely innocent when someone had worked that hard to make them anonymous.”
― Erika Killen, A Song Before Dying: Book Three of The Last Sunrise Trilogy

“Regret does not mean I chose incorrectly,” she said. “I can grieve a life I did not live and still love the one I have.” Ronan said nothing. His fingers closed around hers. “You would have been a good mother,” he said.”
― Erika Killen

“Magic had a smell when it had worked through enough blood. Metal left in rain. Charred herbs. The sweet edge of something beginning to rot despite being fresh. Owen knew the smell. He did not know from where.”
― Erika Killen, The Fifth Road: A Fallow County Novel - Book Three

“Some lines were not bloodlines at all, but oaths. Marriages, betrayals, debts, adoptions, stolen children, returned children, lovers whose names had been braided into inheritance until their descendants could no longer tell where blood ended and bargain began.”
― Erika Killen, The Blood Archivist: Book One of The Blood Archivist Series

“Because I was afraid to die, furious that everyone expected me to do it politely, and vain enough to want more than twenty-eight years.”
― Erika Killen, After the Last Sunrise: Book One of the Last Sunrise Trilogy

“She trusted the house when it creaked, complained, rearranged furniture, opened doors it had no business opening, dropped books onto people it considered insufficiently attentive, and breathed through the walls at inappropriate hours. Noise, with Mercy Row, meant communication. Silence meant strategy.”
― Erika Killen, The Root Unbound: Book 5 of The Blood Archivist Series

“The road took the hands first.”

Miles’s attention sharpened.

“Then the numbers disappeared,” Colin continued. “The case rusted while I held it. I found the watch again later in a room I had not yet entered.”
― Erika Killen, The Fifth Road: A Fallow County Novel - Book Three

“I liked that the widow remained angry after she became competent. Most stories reward a woman’s usefulness by making her pleasant.”
― Erika Killen, The Roads Beneath Blackthorne: A Fallow County Novel - Book One

“A man who cannot lie has not necessarily been given a virtue. He may have been placed under a condition. An obligation. Possibly even a punishment.”
― Erika Killen, The Seventh Line: The Learmoth Series I