Koji > Koji's Quotes

“Berlin. You wouldn't believe it now, but during the 20s, Berlin was the capital city of laissez-faire. We had as much jazz as Chicago, nightclubs and cabarets down every other street, and the city smelled of freedom and poverty.”
― Derek Newman-Stille, We Shall Be Monsters: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein 200 years on

“It was sort of amazing how being in the guts of the ground helped a person to believe what had previously seemed not just impossible but downright laughable.”
― Stephen King, The Outsider

“Was it something about him, my mom mused one night over too much box wine, or was it just because he entertained you kids for a few damn minutes so I could have some time to myself?”
― Kiersten White, Mister Magic

“In some men, it might open a wound, a sad acknowledgment of the state of his marriage, but Ed did not think like that. He lived in the present and was happy to be loved in the present, if not in the past.”
― Carson Winter, The Psychographist

“one of my rare displays of temper but it pissed me off, it truly did, to wake after such a night to find the palace guard, armed with stupidity and questions,”
― Kathe Koja, The Cipher

“Yes, of course, it was the naughty Funhole back of everything, but who got the blame: the box? Or Pandora?”
― Kathe Koja, The Cipher

“and still more to a point that, oh God, I had never imagined there could be so much pain in all the world, certainly not contained in the stupid simple vessel of my body, my body,”
― Kathe Koja, The Cipher

“When you are silent, no one sees you, that is what I know.”
― Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy

“Sometimes, in those drawing rooms, Pan's master is Dusan, sometimes Hanzel or Marcel, always with a tale to tell of his one true name, hidden like Rumpelstiltskin's, as he spins the endless straw of his loneliness to gold.”
― Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy

“They've done playing for patrons,” he says, the boy, the man, the master. “From now on, they shall play for me.”
― Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy

“Or perhaps that is purest make-believe, as a puppet is only a tool, made of wood, and wool, and wire. As we are blood, and fancy, and bits of bone and dream.”
― Kathe Koja, Under the Poppy

“People got such a charge from seeing their names in print. Proof of existence. I could picture a squabble of ghosts ripping through piles of newspapers. Pointing at a name on the page. See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“The actual stuff my family owned, those boxes under my stairs, I can’t quite bear to look at. I like other people’s things better. They come with other people’s history.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“Hunger and poverty steal your childhood and take away your innocence and sense of security.”
― Saroo Brierley, A Long Way Home

“Some people find the bustle of busy cities exciting and energizing, but you see a different side of them if you’re begging or trying to make people stop and listen to you.”
― Saroo Brierley, A Long Way Home

“Snowman himself isn’t old enough for this, this – what can it be called? This situation. He’ll never be old enough, no sane human being could ever …”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“These things sneak up on him for no reason, these flashes of irrational happiness. It’s probably a vitamin deficiency.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“He doesn’t know which is worse, a past he can’t regain or a present that will destroy him if he looks at it too clearly. Then there’s the future. Sheer vertigo.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“Watch out for the leaders, Crake used to say. First the leaders and the led, then the tyrants and the slaves, then the massacres. That’s how it’s always gone.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“You mean, did they occur in nature or were they created by the hand of man? In other words, are they real or fake?” “Mm,” said Jimmy. He didn’t want to get into the what is real thing with Crake. “You know when people get their hair dyed or their teeth done? Or women get their tits enlarged?” “Yeah?” “After it happens, that’s what they look like in real time. The process is no longer important.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“Perhaps they’ll say, These things are not real. They are phantasmagoria. They were made by dreams, and now that no one is dreaming them any longer they are crumbling away.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“He’ll be falsely remembered. He won’t be mourned.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“He doesn’t expect to hear anything, but expectation isn’t the same as desire.”
― Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“every hollow space invites invasion.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Several people passed her, intent on their own stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“I wasn’t in the picture because I’m the frame, she thinks. It’s not really the past. It’s only me, holding it all together. It’s only a handful of fading neural pathways. It’s only a mirage.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Though she was ashamed of herself, it made her hungry. Hungry, and also sad. Maybe sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“It was like being erased off the slate of the universe — to have your own mother act as if you’d never been born.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“Nature full strength is more than we can take, Adam One used to say. It’s a potent hallucinogen, a soporific, for the untrained Soul. We’re no longer at home in it. We need to dilute it. We can’t drink it straight. And God is the same. Too much God and you overdose. God needs to be filtered.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

“But hatred and viciousness are addictive. You can get high on them. Once you’ve had a little, you start shaking if you don’t get more.”
― Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam