A.J. Steiger > Quotes

“I wouldn’t give up a single minute of the time I’ve spent with you. Not even the difficult parts.”
― A.J. Steiger, When My Heart Joins the Thousand: An Emotional Debut YA Romance About Autistic and Chronically Ill Teens Finding Hope

“I’ll always be like this, you know.” “Good. Because I want you exactly the way you are.”
― A.J. Steiger, When My Heart Joins the Thousand: An Emotional Debut YA Romance About Autistic and Chronically Ill Teens Finding Hope

“My fingers graze his chest. I trace the scars on his ribs, like Braille. A history of pain. But without that pain, he wouldn’t be who he is: someone with enough empathy to reach out to me, enough courage to love me. “You’re perfect, Stanley.”
― A.J. Steiger, When My Heart Joins the Thousand: An Emotional Debut YA Romance About Autistic and Chronically Ill Teens Finding Hope

“Are you okay?” he asks, breathless. “Yes,” I reply, just as breathless. I think it’s strange that he’s asking me that when he’s the one who tripped.”
― A.J. Steiger, When My Heart Joins the Thousand: An Emotional Debut YA Romance About Autistic and Chronically Ill Teens Finding Hope

“My heart has joined the Thousand, I murmur. for my friend stopped running today.”
― A.J. Steiger, When My Heart Joins the Thousand: An Emotional Debut YA Romance About Autistic and Chronically Ill Teens Finding Hope

“I always thought those words were the most accurate expression of grief I had ever encountered. When you lose someone, the heart itself becomes one of the thousand enemies- a force of destruction, ripping you apart from the inside, like a knot of shining razor wire. Sometimes , the only way to survive is to kill your heart.”
― A.J. Steiger, When My Heart Joins the Thousand: An Emotional Debut YA Romance About Autistic and Chronically Ill Teens Finding Hope

“I know there is no such thing as forever. Someday we will die and our bones will turn to dust. Someday humankind will be gone and the earth will be ruled by sentient rabbits, or by the machines we leave behind, or by creatures we can't even imagine. And then the sun will go supernova and swallow the earth and all the other planets, and the universe will continue to expand until the bonds of gravity loosen and all things drift away into the darkness, and all stars will go silent and cold, and matter itself will break down into nothingness. Time will end, and there will be nothing but vast, cold, empty space. The atoms that once composed our bodies will be dispersed across unimaginable distances. But then, subatomic particles are connected in ways we don't understand. Two particles that have interacted physically are bound by quantum entanglement. They will react to each other even after being separated, no matter the distance, linked by intangible cords across space and time.”
― A.J. Steiger, When My Heart Joins the Thousand: An Emotional Debut YA Romance About Autistic and Chronically Ill Teens Finding Hope

“What do you think is the worst thing that can happen to a person?"
Goose bumps prickle on my arms and legs. "To die?" I say timidly.
She shakes her head. "Dying is scary, but being dead isn't. Once you're dead, you don't hurt anymore. The worst thing is being alive but dead on the inside.”
― A.J. Steiger, Mindwalker

“In an abstract, mythopoetic sense, feral witch girls have a certain allure; in reality, it's hard to get past the lack of basic hygiene.”
― A.J. Steiger, Eye of a Little God

“As anyone who has been alone for a long time can tell you--and I mean really *truly* alone--slaying your own dragons isn't empowering. It's exhausting and scary. Agency doesn't mean you get a happy ending. It just means that people can blame you when you don't. "Well," they say as you lay drowning and choking in your own blood, "you should have worked harder.”
― A.J. Steiger, Eye of a Little God

“To be fundamentally misperceived is a profound sort of solitude. Contact with others offers no relief when they only see the false self.”
― A.J. Steiger, Eye of a Little God

“For the first time, the little ant finally realized fully what it meant to be an ant. For what could she do, against creatures like that? She looked down at her brothers and sisters below, and she envied them for not knowing the truth. She bowed her head, put her face in her forelegs, and wept. And then she climbed down and she never, ever told anyone what she had seen.”
― A.J. Steiger, Cathedral of Bones

“Ugh," Steven mutters. "Feels like there's a hoedown in my brain and everyone's wearing stiilettos.”
― A.J. Steiger, Mindwalker