Viki > Viki's Quotes

“With a wave of this body’s hand all the braziers are snuffed out in this Inverted Theater. The movement is sudden, as is the disappearance of the light, the darkness you are submerged in so complete you can feel it as a presence that surrounds you, blocking sight of even your own hand. It is not so much an absence as it is an overwhelming smog. You can feel it in your chest. The tightness of your breath. The darkness is closing in on you.

Such was the quality of night in the Old Country, or what they then knew as the true dark, which, when the sun fell from its daily perch, was total and unyielding.

What else could they have hoped for, with no moon in the sky?”
― Simon Jimenez, The Spear Cuts Through Water

“Spreading his fingers out in the whiteness, Takeru let everything flow to the mountain. The pain dispersed into a thousand snowflakes, then ten thousand, thinning like mist to the morning.

For his whole life, Takeru had been certain that he was right to cast his pain off on the mountain, that it was the only way—because how could one possibly hold so much suffering in something as small as a human form?

Yet here was this this woman who held everything inside a little body of flesh and blood without breaking”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“Then she reached out and held him. Cold. But what did that matter? So was she.”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“Are they stars?” she whispered in wonder.
“I am flattered by your wild estimation of my abilities,” Elias said, with a hint of pleasant mirth. “I should lie and say that I have indeed brought down the stars for your amusement. But it’s a simple magic trick, and nothing more.”
― Olivia Atwater, Half a Soul

“Don't let this silence become a habit.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. Memory may not be the heart of what makes us human, but it's at least a vital organ. Nevertheless, we must take care not to let the bliss of the present fade when compared to supposedly better days. We're happy, sure, but were we more happy then? If we let it, memory can make shadows of the now, as nothing can match the buttressed legends of our past. Do not let memory chase you. Enjoy memories, yes, but don't be a slave to who you wish you once had been.
Those memories aren't alive. You are.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“He was frightened of everything, it sometimes seemed, and he hated that about himself. Fear and hatred: often, it seemed that those were the only two qualities he possessed. Fear of everyone else; hatred of himself.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Now, most people would agree that humans are not telepathic. We can’t directly send our thoughts or emotions into the minds of others. Nevertheless, you can hear my story and imagine the things I describe—the same as I picture them in my own mind. What is that, if not a form of telepathy?”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“I wish I’d found you before. Not someone like you. But you.”
― T.J. Klune, Under the Whispering Door

“The library was blessedly empty, probably due in part to the cold. Mist rolled down from Argant’s green hills and hung about Caer-Isel like a horde of ghosts. The university’s bell tower wore its fog as if it were a widow’s mourning veil.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“I'd lived enough years now to know that there were some ghosts that haunted you forever.”
― Adrienne Young, Spells for Forgetting

“The machine can summon spirits, but it can’t create art. Art is about intent, Yumi. A rainbow isn’t art, beautiful though it might be. Art is about creation. Human creation. I don’t care how well a machine piles rocks. The fact that you do it is what matters to me.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

“Flayed and boneless, he faced the creature he had awakened, this woman of gods’ blood and fury.”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“In that moment of awe, Takeru realized how much he owed this woman, who had borne his children, who had fought, and fought, and fought for a family she had never asked for. She had given him her life and demanded nothing in return. Mamoru hadn’t inherited his strength from his father. It had come from her.”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“The snow pulled at Takeru, offering tenderly to take the pain away. His fingers spread out in its beckoning cold, ready to oblige—but Misaki was still looking at him with expectation in her eyes. That gaze clutched him like claws—or a pair of arms—holding him.

So, instead of giving himself to the snow, Takeru dug his hands into it hard. His fist tightened and the snow rushed up to him. In an agonizing surge, it seemed to give back everything he had sent out into it over forty years”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“She breathed out and the last of the ghosts lifted. Not just [redacted]’s. There had been other ghosts trapped here: the spirit of a ferocious teenage girl and the boy she loved. They were gone now too, passed into the realm of memory where they belonged, where they could rest. As the spirits faded, so did the last of the ties that had bound Misaki to the horizon for so many years, dissolving like threads of blood in water.”
― M.L. Wang, The Sword of Kaigen

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
― Anton Chekhov