Kel > Kel's Quotes

“Anyone who has ridden the subway twice a day to earn their bread knows how it goes: When you board, you exhibit the same persona you use with your colleagues and acquaintances. You've carried it through the turnstile and past the sliding doors, so that your fellow passengers can tell who you are - cocky or cautious, amorous or indifferent, loaded or on the dole. But you find yourself a seat and the train gets under way; it comes to one station and then another; people get off and others get on. And under the influence of the cradlelike rocking of the train, your carefully crafted persona begins to slip away. The super-ego dissolves as your mind begins to wander aimlessly over your cares and your dreams; or better yet, it drifts into ambient hypnosis, where even cares and dreams recede and the peaceful silence of the cosmos pervades.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“He must have a lover of his own, some man or woman or animal whose absence hurt like a presence, some person that he poured himself into like a mold to remind himself of what he was.”
― Alexandra Kleeman, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

“Sometimes I think of atoms as tiny people who are extremely scared and hold hands with each other a lot. I imagine that my body is made of tiny, scared people, and they pick up mugs and books, which are made of other tiny, scared people. And when you sex someone it's just lots of tiny, scared people holding hands.
I think about the tiny people that are me and I feel less alone.
I'm an army of tiny people, trying their best.”
― Ben Brooks, Lolito

“But you could, if you were wrong and if you had a crooked heart, forget this most obvious and endearing thing and instead speak of a time you were all alone, in the country, with no one wanting a thing from you, not even love. You could say that was your happiest time. And if you did this then telling about this happiest of times would cause the person you most want to be happy to be unhappy.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“I waited to be told what was good about me. [...] All that time I had spent readying myself, the articles that taught me life was really just a waiting room until someone noticed you- the boys had spent that time becoming themselves.”
― Emma Cline, The Girls

“We have traveled.
Now you will be the path
I will walk I will walk
Over you.”
― Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

“It was as though the edges of things were where the greater part might be hidden - where he could find more.”
― Jesse Ball, A Cure for Suicide

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”
― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders

“I have too much emotion to only be a dick to the people who deserve it.”
― Kirk Lynn, Rules for Werewolves

“Bird misses everything at once. One thing makes her want all the others— lived or not, still she misses them. She misses lives she has never lived— days issued out of the future , hours that will never be.”
― Noy Holland, Bird