Katlin > Katlin's Quotes

“Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Stories have changed, my dear boy,” the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad. “There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep overlapping and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there in no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“We lead strange lives, chasing our dreams around from place to place.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I have tried to let you go and I cannot. I cannot stop thinking of you. I cannot stop dreaming about you.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Celia, wait,” Marco says, standing but not moving closer to her. “You are breaking my heart. You told me once that I reminded you of your father. That you never wanted to suffer the way your mother did for him, but you are doing exactly that to me. You keep leaving me. You leave me longing for you again and again when I would give anything for you to stay, and it is killing me.”
“It has to kill one of us,” Celia says quietly.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.' 'But you built me dreams instead.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Marco moves to close the distance between them, kissing away her tears before catching her lip with his own.
As he kisses her, the bonfire glows brighter. The acrobats catch the light perfectly as they spin. The entire circus sparkles, dazzling every patron.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I suggest you keep your distance from her and concentrate on your own work.”
“I’m in love with her.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” he says. “It will make the challenge a great deal more difficult for you.”
“We have been playing at this for more than a decade, when does it end?”
“It ends when there is a victor.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“To be rather than to seem.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I have been surrounded by love letters you two have built each other for years, encased in tents.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Is magic not enough to live for?" Widget asks.
"Magic," the man in the grey suit repeats, turning the word into a laugh. "This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it. Look around you," he says, waving a hand at the surrounding tables. "Not a one of them even has an inkling of the things that are possible in this world, and what's worse is that none of them would listen if you attempted to enlighten them. They want to believe that magic is nothing but clever deception, because to think it real would keep them up at night, afraid of their own existence."
"But some people can be enlightened," Widget says.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“But I'm not special", Bailey says, "not the way they are. I'm not anyone important."
"I know", Celia said, "you are not destined or chosen. I wish I could tell you that you were if that would make it easier, but it is not true. You are in the right place, at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that is enough.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“But you built me dreams instead.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“He reads histories and mythologies and fairy tales, wondering why it seems that only girls are ever swept away from their mundane lives on farms by knights or princes or wolves. It strikes him as unfair to not have the same fanciful opportunity himself. And he is not in the position to do any rescuing of his own.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“So it’s really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“The circus arrives without warning.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I don't think there's anything wrong being a dreamer.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Follow your dreams Bailey. Be they Harvard or somehing else entirely. No matter what that father of yours says, or how loudly he might say it. He forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Wine is bottled poetry, he thinks.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“How are you managing to keep everyone from aging?” Celia asks after a while.
“Very carefully,” Marco answers.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“A woman I should like to think I know rather well and a woman I had always considered a mystery, are in fact the same person.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Prospero the Enchanter's immediate reaction upon meeting his daughter is a simple declaration of: "Well, fuck.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus