Aster > Aster's Quotes

“I thought of my life, then, as a series of chapters in a book. I had finished the previous chapter, and it seemed to me, on reflection, as I stood here with the rest of my life in my hands, as if not much of any note had really happened in that chapter at all, despite the length of it.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“My recent loss was too fresh, too sharp. I couldn’t cut myself on the edges of it. Not again. Not right now.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“When had it become such a titanic, colossal struggle to simply exist as a normal, functioning human being?”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“I had always felt things deeply, that was my nature. It was why I was a writer. Sometimes, the feelings were so huge, they needed a place to go.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“The Island had taken a soft, privileged woman and chewed her up, remoulded her into something else, something raw, and desperate.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“So this is what it’s like when someone you love dies, I thought. Like constantly trying to swallow a sharp stone.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“The absence of things is so loud it pierces my brain with loss. What used to be, is simply no more.
But the memories linger like smoke in the air.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“People need something tangible to attach their grief to. There is no comfort to be taken from wide open spaces full of nothing.”
― Gemma Amor, White Pines

“It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.”
― Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters

“It wasn’t like this in the stories. In the old tales, when a young man went forth to have adventures, he endured his trials and came forth triumphant. He became a leader, or acquired a magical skill, or at the very least wed a princess. Maybe all three. There was never any question, not even in the darkest moment, that the hero would conquer both his enemies and his self-doubt. Perhaps that was why I had been angry with Simon, because I wanted the ending of his story to be the good one he deserved.”
― Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest

“The mother-shaped hole became a cutout of the blackest black. Something I could only see around. If I tried to look directly at it, I saw emptiness.”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“I listen to the clock striking out each determined tick. If only I could rewind, go back in time and ask my mother every question about every tiny thing. How crucial those little fragments are now; how great their absence. I should have saved them up, gathering them like drops of water in a desert. I'd always counted on having an oasis.”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“Hold your finger to the sky with so much force it lengthens like a spine. Look up to the point of it and beyond. There. That tiny patch of the world, no bigger than the tip of your finger. At first glance, it might look like one flat color. Blue, or gray, or maybe even orange.

But it's much more complex than that. Squint. See the daubs of lilac. The streak of sage no wider than a hyphen. That butterscotch smear and the faint wash of carnelian. All of them coming together to swirl at the point just above your finger.

Breathe them in. Let them settle in your lungs. Those are the colors of right now.”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“最難風雨故人來 [...] it’s an incredible blessing to be able to see your loved ones during the most difficult times.”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

“It's gonna hurt, now," said Amy. "anything dead coming back to life hurts.”
― Toni Morrison

“She did not tell them to clean up their lives, or go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek, or its glory-bound pure. She told them that the only grace they could have is the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they could not have it.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Enjoy yourself. There are many good things in the world, and each of them happens for the first time only once, and never again.”
― Seanan McGuire, In an Absent Dream

“Home always shrinks in times of absence, always bleeds away some of its majesty, because what is home, after all, apart from the place one returns to when the adventure is over? Home is an end to glory, a stopping point when the tale is done.”
― Seanan McGuire, In an Absent Dream

“Even she didn’t know who she really was: the fun, capable colleague, or the revolting madwoman lurking under the surface. There was no singularity, no undeniable truth, no middle ground. She felt both sane and deranged, joyful and miserable, competent and crippled.”
― Luiza Sauma, Everything You Ever Wanted

“She didn’t see things, she didn’t hear things, she had a job. She seemed like a normal person. All this pretending, performing, it was her life’s work – so much harder than anything she did at Freedom & Co.”
― Luiza Sauma, Everything You Ever Wanted

“They were just passing the time, playing their roles, like bad actors saying their lines too quickly, without conviction, because they wanted to walk off stage and go home. It didn’t matter how she performed. It didn’t matter if she didn’t change. All that mattered was staying in character and knowing your place. Nod, smile, promise to try harder, be grateful for the opportunity – always grateful.”
― Luiza Sauma, Everything You Ever Wanted

“I should be busy, I should be moving forward, I should be working on my leadership skills, making plans to take over the world. But what she really wanted to do was to stand up and scream, ‘I don’t give a fuck!”
― Luiza Sauma, Everything You Ever Wanted

“To be so lucky and so miserable, it was insufferable. I should be put down like a dog, she thought. I need to leave London. I need to leave the country, the planet, the solar system.”
― Luiza Sauma, Everything You Ever Wanted

“On another planet, in another universe, we’re still kids and it’s summer, and it always will be. That was the planet she wanted to go to.”
― Luiza Sauma, Everything You Ever Wanted

“Elias’s body, emptied of his soul, now seems both precious and cursed.”
― Luiza Sauma, Everything You Ever Wanted