Nicole Brugger > Nicole's Quotes

“The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling, and they’re only a few steps behind you, finding the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren’t stitched up quite right, the place they could almost slip right into through if the skin wasn’t trying to keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side of the theater where the curtain keeps rising. I crawled out the window and ran into the woods. I had to make up all the words myself. The way they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made this place for you. A place for to love me. If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.”
― Richard Siken

“Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.”
― Richard Siken

“Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars
for you? That I would take you there? The splash
of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube?”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something's not right about what I'm doing but I'm still doing it-- living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling.
The enormity of my desire disgusts me.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero.”
― Richard Siken

“I’m not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better. But please, isn’t this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies?”
― Richard Siken

“and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is
a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me
tight, it’s getting cold.”
― Richard Siken

“When you paint an evil thing, do you invoke it or take away its power?”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Something’s not
right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it—
living in the worst parts, ruining myself.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“you’re all I ever wanted

and worth dying for too”
― Richard Siken

“I will come back from the dead for you.”
― Richard Siken

“It starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed, always the same
running from something larger than yourself story”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“People get hurt here. People fall down and stay down and I don't like
the way the song goes.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“I try, I do. I try and try. A happy ending?”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“the sails
in wind and the slap of waves on the hull
of a boat that's sinking to the sound of mermaids
singing songs of love, and the tug of a simple
profound sadness when it sounds so far away.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“The fields burned, the land destroyed, the lovers left
broken in the brown dirt.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“She wouldn't wish love on anyone. It was the guest you welcomed and then couldn't be rid of.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Siege and Storm

“The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept from this oath.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“She smiled then, her eyes red, her cheeks scattered with some kind of dust. It was a smile he thought he might die to earn again.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“Greed may do your bidding, but death serves no man.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“The easiest way to steal a man’s wallet is to tell him you’re going to steal his watch. You take his attention and direct it where you want it to go.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows