Lilith Mühlberg > Lilith's Quotes

“Werewolfism may have scared men in particular, being less accustomed than women to the idea of a monthly, biological cycle beyond their control, which involves the shedding of blood, not to mention a potentially beastly mood.”
― Peter Laws, The Frighteners: Why We Love Monsters, Ghosts, Death & Gore

“...that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea, because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted... He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him 'poor Richard,' been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Musgrove, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters, Volume 1

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“That was the cruelest irony: the more you did to save yourself, the less you became a person worth saving.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“I was a woman when it was convenient to blame me, and a girl when they wanted to use me.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“I wish I had fought.” Effy surprised herself by saying it. The words had leaped out of her throat, unbidden. “I know I beat him in the end, but for so many years all I could do was run and hide. I just sat there and let the water pour in around me. I didn’t know that I could fight back. I didn’t know how to do anything but wait to drown.”
“Oh no, Effy. That’s not what I meant at all. You don’t have to take up a sword. Survival is bravery, too.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“Effy found herself half in love with the Fairy King sometimes, too. The tender belly of his cruelty made her heart flutter. There was an intimacy to all violence, she supposed. The better you knew someone, the more terribly you could hurt them.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“It began as all things did: a girl on the shore, terrified and desirous.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“We must discuss, then, the relationship between women and water. When men fall into the sea, they drown. When women meet the water, they transform. It becomes vital to ask: is this a metamorphosis, or a homecoming?”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“I will love you to ruination.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“The pills were meant to be a seawall against her visions, against the unreal world that always seemed to be blooming underneath the real one, like the beat of blood behind a bruise, waiting for its moment to break through.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“No. The word rose in her mind like a steep and powerful wave, one that darkened the whole shoreline. But it crashed against an invisible seawall, a barrier as stubborn and unrelenting as the face of a cliff.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“That was the truth at the very center of everything, the truth she had tried her whole life to evade: there were no fairies, no magic, and the world was just ordinary and cruel.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“You don’t see yourself very clearly, Effy.” Preston shifted in his seat so that they were facing one another. “Challenging me isn’t pestering. I’m not always right. Sometimes I deserve to be challenged. And changing your mind isn’t foolish. It just means you’ve learned something new. Everyone changes their mind sometimes, as they should, or else they’re just, I don’t know, stubborn and ignorant. Moving water is healthy; stagnant water is sickly. Tainted.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“How terrible, to navigate the world without a story to comfort you.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“I refuse mirrors," the Fairy King said. "I refuse them for you, and I refuse them for me. If you want to see what you are, look into the tide pools at dusk. Look into the sea.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“A common belief during labor is that a baby’s needs supersede that of the mother’s. Women don’t always know they have options. Or they aren’t given a choice in their care. If they are, they aren’t allowed ample time or information to come to a decision themselves. Choices are made without their consent. Too many women don’t want to be a burden and so they say nothing. The mistreatment is subtle, too, and falls under the guise of medical care.”
― Mary Kubica, Local Woman Missing