Kenna > Kenna's Quotes

“Per aspera ad astra. I’d heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns, to the stars.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Can you love my brain even when it is small? When it is malevolent? When it is violent? Can you love it even when it does not love me?”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“I could study you for a lifetime, carrying all your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“She is in all of his spaces and all of his thoughts. He contemplates formulas and degrees of rationality and they all turn into her. He thinks about time, which has only recently begun, or at least now feels different. He thinks: the Babylonians were wrong; time is made of her.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Pretty, that's what you think this is? You think that's all she's capable of? You fool, she's done the impossible. She has explained everything there is to know about the world in less than the time it took for your eyes to filly focus, and do you realize that I will spend a lifetime trying to do the same never come close? This is an opus!, this is a triumph!, this is the meaning of life and you would think the answer would be satire, but it isn't, its Truth. She tomd the Truth like you could never dream of telling it, and I pity you, that you could see the inside of your own soul and reduce it like this, so pitylessly. So carelessly.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“So when people say we¡re alone in the ether?" "Alone in everything. In time and space, in existence, in religion.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Deities themselves had changed over time, but the act of devotion had not.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Either yes, it mattered very much, because everything was a consequence of something and therefore what became of them was somehow predetermined, or no, it did not matter at all, because beginnings and endings were not as important as the moments that could have happened or the outcomes that might have been.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It's the saddest thing I know.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“I will always love you, I will love you until the day I die— and if you’re the one to kill me, then by all means, you should know without a trace of doubt you will not have turned me away. I will have spent the final beat of my heart loving you, just as I always have. Only you, Masha. Only you, forever, I promise.”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“Write me a tragedy, Lev Fedorov,” she whispered to him. “Write me a litany of sins. Write me a plague of devastation. Write me lonely, write me wanting, write me shattered and fearful and lost. Then write me finding myself in your arms, if only for a night, and then write it again. Write it over and over, Lev, until we both know the pages by heart. Isn’t that a story, too?” she asked him softly.”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“If I ever decide to give my heart to you, Dima, she’d said, holding his hand palm up, then cut it out of my chest and keep it somewhere safe, where no one else can get to it. Keep it locked somewhere, she murmured, repeating the old stories as she brushed her lips against the lines of his palm: Inside a needle, inside of an egg, which is inside of a duck, which is inside a hare, which is in an iron chest—and then bury it under our green oak tree, Dima, where no one will ever find it.

Keep it safe for me, Dima, will you?”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“I’m keeping you from death, not letting you live. There’s a difference.”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“you don’t become a smaller version of yourself simply because what you once had is gone.”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“The past is nothing. We are everything.”
― Olivie Blake, One for My Enemy

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“Homework is not an option. My bed is sending out serious nap rays. I can't help myself. The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am. I have no choice but to snuggle under the covers.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Gym should be illegal. It's humiliating.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me. My closest is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak