Gemma > Gemma's Quotes

“I was in a house with many rooms. The sea sweeps through the house. Sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“And You. Who are You? Who is it that I am writing for? Are You a traveller who has cheated Tides and crossed Broken Floors and Derelict Stairs to reach these Halls? Or are You perhaps someone who inhabits my own Halls long after I am dead?”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“Why did you think he described the other world—the one he said he went to most often—as a labyrinth?’

Ketterley shrugged. ‘A vision of cosmic grandeur, I suppose. A symbol of the mingled glory and horror of existence. No one gets out alive.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“In all these places I have stood in Doorways and looked ahead.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“The Waters covered me and for a moment I was surrounded by the strange silence that comes when the Sea sweeps over you and drowns it own sounds.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“And where were you?’ he asks. ‘While you were gone?’ ‘I was in a house with many rooms. The sea sweeps through the house. Sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“All around me doors into other worlds began appearing but I knew the one I wanted, the one into which everything forgotten flows. The edges of that door were frayed and worn by the passage of old ideas leaving the world.”
― Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

“I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“But gods are born of ichor and nectar, their excellences already bursting from their fingertips. So they find their fame by proving what they can mar: destroying cities, starting wars, breeding plagues and monsters. All that smoke and savor rising so delicately from our altars. It leaves only ash behind.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“It was their favorite bitter joke: those who fight against prophecy only draw it more tightly around their throats.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“They do not care if you are good. They barely care if you are wicked. The only thing that makes them listen is power.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I felt the currents move. The grains of sand whispered against each other. His wings were lifting. The darkness around us shimmered with clouds of his gilded blood. Beneath my feet were the bones of a thousand years. I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer.

Then, child, make another.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You cannot control others if you cannot control yourself. Those who most understand their own limitations have the fewest.”
― Stephen Fry, Heroes: Mortals and Monsters, Quests and Adventures