orange > orange's Quotes

“I want to tell them about the stones piling up in my stomach. That my thoughts are tangled and wordless.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“I suppose most things in a person's life are good for a while, even if that doesn't last very long. Maybe that is why, even after something has gone wrong, we spend so much time trying to fix it. Because we remember when it wasn't broken.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“I start to worry that I should be saying something. Most of the time I think I could be perfectly content without saying a single word, but no one else seems to function that way. There is so much talking in the world, and so much expectation to talk, even if you do not feel like talking. I find it overwhelming.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“If I am a puzzle, this is the moment in which I find the first corner piece. There is still a lot of work to do; I still have a thousand pieces of myself to fit into place. But everyone knows you're supposed to find the corners first. They are the beginning.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“I wonder if Mom and Dad fell in love in a day, or if it took much longer, and if it makes a difference. If the way you fall in love determines how long you will stay in love, or if you will stay in love at all.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“I feel like we are playing the Quiet Game. When you're tired of playing and want to shout out all the words you've been keeping inside you, but you absolutely cannot lose. So instead you sit, and bite down on everything screaming inside you, and wait.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“My chest is knotted up. I feel like a person standing in the middle of a crowded street. The person is screaming, but nothing is coming out, and no one's paying attention anyway.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“I hear whispers, bare feet slapping on wood floors, bodies moving throughout the house... The Harts are a storm and I am its bewildered eye.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“Dad rubs the back of his head and says nothing. The room is full of secrets-- on Dad's face, hanging in the air like clouds of dust-- but I don't know how to read them. Dad looks smaller than he ever has before.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“This is a room for a princess, and I am anything but that.
What am I?
A lump of heaviness. A stranger. A thing that does not fit.
I can't seem to stop the poison inside me from spreading.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“Some people might think it's odd that we hardly ever eat dinner together at the table. I like our way, though. It makes me feel grown-up, like Mom and Dad don't have to pretend to care about typical dinnertime rituals.
We're all adults here. We eat how we want to eat.
But dinner at Hart House is like a dance. Not only do I not know the steps, but I seem to have forgotten how to move my legs entirely.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“...another thing I'm not used to, another thing that makes me feel small and bulky at the same time.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“When I set the glass back down, I see the prints my sweaty fingers have left behind. I feel a sense of deep, sudden friendship with that smudge.
That is me. My aunts and uncles, my grandparents, my beautiful, beautiful cousins-- I am a smudge on their glass.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“I never want to scare my parents again.
I don't want them to look at me like I am broken in a way they don't know how to fix.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“All I can picture is Mom working at the table and Dad working at his desk, and my empty spot on the couch, and silence.
All I can think is that, without me there, they don't have to pretend everything is okay.
They don't have to pretend smile, and say pretend /have a good day/ and pretend /I love you./
Pretend words sound so different from real ones. Like you've got something stuck in your throat that won't come out, and you're trying to act like it isn't there.”
― Claire Legrand

“Time's a slippery little jerk, Fin." Dad sounds tired. "Things happen more quickly than you think. One minute you're a kid, and the next minute you're grown up and wondering what the heck happened when you weren't looking.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“It seems like I didn't know what I was doing, like I was just a silly kid playing make-believe.
Before long these thoughts are so loud they start to feel true:
I am just a silly kid playing make-believe.
I don't know what I am doing.
I am all wrong.”
― Claire Legrand, Some Kind of Happiness

“After all, words are what remain when all the deeds have been done. Words can shatter faith; start a war; change the course of history. A story can make your heart beat faster; topple walls; scale mountains - hey, a story can even raise the dead. And that's why the King of Stories ended up being the King of the gods; because writing history and making history are only the breadth of a page apart.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“Well, that's history for you, folks. Unfair, untrue and for the most part written by folk who weren't even there.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“Work. Like pain, I sensed that this was an experience I would want to avoid as often as possible.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“Always look on the bright side. And if there is no bright side?
Look away.”
― Joanne M. Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“Loki, that's me. Loki, the Light-Bringer, the misunderstood, the elusive, the handsome and modest hero of this particular tissue of lies.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
No one's immune to bribery.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“Sticks and stones may break my bones’, as they say in the Middle Worlds, but with the right words you can build a world and make yourself the king of it.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“The dead know everything, but don't give a damn.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“Clever folk aren’t popular, by and large. They arouse suspicion. They don’t fit in.”
― Joanne M. Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“I don’t pretend to know much about love, but that’s how great love comes to an end, not in the flames of passion, but in the silence of regret.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“From this I think we can all conclude that the cow was the primary instigator of everything that followed - war, Tribulation, the End of the Worlds. Lesson One: never trust a rumiant.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“There's good news and slightly less good news.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki

“And Odin should have known from the first that perfect Order does not bend; it simply stands until it breaks, which is why it rarely survives for any meaningful length of time.”
― Joanne Harris, The Gospel of Loki