Katie > Katie's Quotes

“Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.”
― James Thurber, The 13 Clocks

“I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence and Other Poems

“I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Every star, turning in the black depth of heaven, burns for no better reason than that humanity raised its face to look. Every great deed needs to be witnessed. Go out there and do something great.”
― Mark Lawrence, Red Sister

“Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It's like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There's no “correct” interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can't see both at the same time.

“Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.”
― Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others

“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives life back to those who no longer exist.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“I wish we could go back in time and climb trees together again. I love you, Vera. I always will.”
― A.S. King, Please Ignore Vera Dietz

“Because this has to stop now. Life's too short to live the whole thing underground.”
― A.S. King, Dig

“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Expansion History, and you came to the description of the triple sunrises you can see when you're hanging in Lsel Station's Lagrange point, and you thought, At last, there are words for how I feel, and they aren't even in my language―>
Yes, Mahit says. Yes, she does. That ache: longing and a violent sort of self-hatred, that only made the longing sharper.

We felt that way.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“The universe began as an enormous breath being held. Who knows why, but whatever the reason, I'm glad it did, because I owe my existence to that fact. All my desires and ruminations are no more and no less than eddy currents generated by the gradual exhalation of our universe. And until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.”
― Ted Chiang, Exhalation

“There once was a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was married to a nurse. He loved her—immeasurably. One day Halsted noticed that his wife’s hands were chapped and red when she came back from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.
When I met Ana, I knew:
I loved her to the point of invention.”
― Sarah Ruhl, The Clean House

“Wild birds die in cages.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“Think of me sometimes," he returned. "When the snowdrops have bloomed and the snow has melted.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“I have plucked snowdrops at Midwinter, died at my own choosing, and wept for a nightingale. Now I am beyond prophecy.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“I did not know I was lonely, she thought, until I was no longer alone.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“As I could, I loved you.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“How? I am a demon and a nightmare; I die every spring, and I will live forever.”
― Katherine Arden, The Girl in the Tower

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I can see the sun, but even if I cannot see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there - that is living.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“There are jokes about breast surgeons.
You know-- something like-- I've seen more breasts in this city than--
I don't know the punch line.
There must be a punch line.

I'm not a man who falls in love easily. I've been faithful to my
wife. We fell in love when we were twenty-two. We had plans. There
was justice in the world. There was justice in love. If a person was
good enough, an equally good person would fall in love with that
person. And then I met-- Ana. Justice had nothing to do with it.

There once was a very great American surgeon named Halsted. He was
married to a nurse. He loved her-- immeasurably. One day Halsted
noticed that his wife's hands were chapped and red when she came back
from surgery. And so he invented rubber gloves. For her. It is
one of the great love stories in medicine. The difference between
inspired medicine and uninspired medicine is love.

When I met Ana, I knew:
I loved her to the point of invention.”
― Sarah Ruhl, The Clean House and Other Plays

“This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.”
― Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice

“I would like to curl up and become a small thing. About this big. And still. Very still. Have you ever become so melancholy, that you wanted to fit in the palm of your beloved’s hand? And lie there, for fortnights, or decades, or the length of time between stars? In complete silence?”
― Sarah Ruhl, Melancholy Play

“Smallness is subversive, because smallness can creep into smaller places and wreak transformation at the most vulnerable, cellular level. In a time when largeness is threatening to topple us, I wish to remember and praise the beauty of smallness, in order to banish the Goliath of loneliness.”
― Sarah Ruhl, 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater

“Do you not think, Mrs. Givings, that snow is always kind? Because it has to fall slowly, to meet the ground slowly, or the eyelash slowly— And things that meet each other slowly are kind.”
― Sarah Ruhl, In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play

“There’s a word in Japanese for being sad in the springtime – a whole word for just being sad – about how pretty the flowers are and how soon they’re going to die.”
― Sarah Ruhl, Melancholy Play

“Because that's what the story's really about: getting out of paying your debts. That's not how they tell it, but I knew. My father was a moneylender, you see.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“And then we jumped off Mount Olympus and flew through the clouds and you held your knee to your chest because you skinned it on a sharp cloud and then we fell into a salty lake. Then I woke up and the window frightened me and I thought: Eurydice is dead. Then I thought—who is Eurydice? Then the whole room started to float and I thought: what are people? Then my bed clothes smiled at me with a crooked green mouth and I thought: who am I? It scares me, Eurydice. Please come back.”
― Sarah Ruhl, Eurydice

“There’s a word in Japanese for being sad in the springtime – a whole word for just being sad – about how pretty the flowers are and how soon they’re going to die.”
— Sarah Ruhl”
― Sarah Ruhl

“A good joke cleans your insides out. If I don't laugh for a week, I feel dirty. I feel dirty now, like my insides are rotting.”
― Sarah Ruhl, The Clean House