Sue > Sue's Quotes

“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

“Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river
                    but then he’s still left
with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away
                                                                        but then he’s still left with his hands.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.”
― Richard Siken

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

“Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
                                                                                and dress them in warm clothes again.
          How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.
                    It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,
          it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,
                              how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
                                                                                                                        to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means
          we're inconsolable.
                                                            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

“Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“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

“Hello, darling. Sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“L'habitude du desepoir est pire que le desespoir lui-meme.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger / La Peste

“My God, my God, whose performance am I watching? How many people am I? Who am I? What is this space between myself and myself?”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“Why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close