Adrienne Celt > Quotes

“I hesitate to describe the work that earned me Bs and Cs that year as plagiarism: every word I wrote was my own. It's just the ideas that were borrowed, and the passion for them. My instructors were all relieved to find my papers suddenly passable - no one likes to fail the war orphan. And for my part, I came to enjoy whipping up a textual froth from the enthusiasms of Tolstoy, Thoreau, or de Tocqueville. If my ideas contradicted themselves from one assignment to the next - well. That was seen as the purview of youth. No one minded theft or inconsistency, even vitriol, so long as it meant you were making a statement. This was my first great lesson in being American, and I took it to heart.”
― Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire

“But you cannot change your nature. If you are a lonely creature, this cannot be undone. Something will always crop up to remind you.”
― Adrienne Celt

“No one minded theft or inconsistency, even vitriol, so long as it meant you were making a statement. This was my first great lesson in being American, and I took it to heart.”
― Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire

“She had once sworn she’d never stop being moved by all the terrible headlines, but there were so many of them, they became normal no matter what you did – the sensation of struggling against bad normalcy as familiar to Bertie, now, as breathing.”
― Adrienne Celt, End of the World House

“You'll have doubtless sense the space closing, reader, between where I sit now, writing with my cheap black pen, and where I was, then. A time eclipse. The two moments slowly moving together until a window emerges where like meets like. You can't jump through, but you can at least peek, pressing your face against the glass to feel the heat from fading summer sun.”
― Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire

“Why hold on to all this, you might ask? I don't know where else to keep it. I don't know how to put it down.”
― Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire

“But her motivations were always her own. She ignored me often enough to lead me to expect it. She loved me just enough to pit my stomach with yearning.”
― Adrienne Celt, The Daughters

“Kate wore a black silk blouse with puff sleeves, a crepe dress with gold sundials all over it, a pair of shoes that were hot pink with two-inch soles which made her look like a delivery girl for a demigod, blessed with feet that could go the distance.”
― Adrienne Celt, End of the World House

“You never know why not, before it happens. That’s what Bertie realized. Time passes. Slow, then fast. Bit by bit, and then it’s gone.”
― Adrienne Celt, End of the World House

“You have to understand, I didn’t let him keep me from proper hygiene, but I took special pleasure in getting ready now, knowing he wouldn’t be around to pout or moan about my hairspray. Anyhow, one always dresses with more care for a woman.”
― Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire

“It seems odd to me to think of my voice scratched into a wax cylinder, trapped like a spirit caught in a jar. Worse still a computer chip: the tip of my tongue striking my teeth, the glottal contractions in my throat, even the air that circulates through my lungs and my blood, all somehow frozen onto a thumb drive that I can toss in my purse. A song is best sustained through performance, where it can respond to the world around it. Be shaped by its surroundings. Made new. In that way it's like a story, never so alive as when it's being told.”
― Adrienne Celt, The Daughters

“Was I apprehensive, reader? Naturally I was. I'd expected an unwilling participant, a Vera of cold and ice pushing me away with both hands. I'd found instead a bosom buddy, ready-made. To easy. Too neat.”
― Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire

“The scent changes, though, as you hop between tongues. I’m not sure how you achieve the effect, but you can trust me. I am fluent in you.”
― Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire

“She and Kate had wanted to see the things everyone else saw, too, but with their own eyes. That was how art, how anything, became immortal. Becoming a still point in the universe, around which endless bodies revolved.”
― Adrienne Celt, End of the World House

“Why had she ever wanted to come here? To see art. To see someone else’s inspiration, but in its worst, its least natural form. The point being not that it was beautiful, but that it was chosen.”
― Adrienne Celt, End of the World House

“Her morning thoughts were frequently on the darker side, given as she was to holding over the remnants of forgotten dreams.”
― Adrienne Celt, Invitation to a Bonfire

“I could tell Kara a story. She has a lot to learn about me, about the past. Where she comes from, where she's going. And anyway, isn't that the function of stories? To teach our brains to dream? It would be daunting to fall asleep into the noise of complete darkness, infinite probability. Without the guide of a little narrative, a little magic, how would we know where to go when we closed our eyes?”
― Adrienne Celt, The Daughters

“Both of them dated a lot, though unsuccessfully, choosing the solace of easy sex over the ontological work of rearranging their lives for relationships.”
― Adrienne Celt, End of the World House