Black Sheep Quotes

“I found it interesting that those who believed themselves righteous only ever cared about those who agreed with them, and were keen to let those who didn’t suffer whatever brutal fate. There seemed to me an inherent hypocrisy in faith itself.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I wondered what the difference was between being told to have faith and to be quiet. I suspected there wasn’t one.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“Some people need conspiracies, finding the simple horror of the truth too brutal.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I’d learned quickly after leaving home that family is an inevitable part of conversation, especially if you volunteer to work holiday shifts as often as I did. I also learned that when you tell people you’re estranged from your family, they always assume it’s your fault. They assume it’s on you that you don’t get along with the fam, that it’s a character flaw. They see it as a red flag. Even if they, too, are estranged. There’s so little empathy and understanding when it comes to family, the cornerstone of society, the root of existence.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“What I do know, what I’ve learned the hard way, is that we don’t get to choose our parents or the circumstances we’re born into. We can’t change our blood. But it shouldn’t determine our fate. It doesn’t. We still get to choose who we are, who we want to be.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“That’s what’s special about adolescent laughter. So much, so big, over so little. You lose the ability to laugh like that as you get older. The more you know, the less funny it all becomes.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“How can anyone know when ruin wears the disguise of love?”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“One thing I’d learned out in the world was that nobody’s so different. We all buy toilet paper, contemplate the ply. Request help at self-checkout because something always fucking goes wrong, doesn’t scan. We all spend too much money at Target, stand there in the parking lot going through the receipt, brow furrowed. We forget to take our vitamins, to take out the trash. We microwave leftovers. Set our alarms. Waste time on the internet. Forget our passwords. We worshipped gods of our choosing.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“It occurred to me then, mouth full of chocolate chip banana mush, that our past is not the truth. It’s warped by time and emotion, inevitably muddied by love and resentment, joy and shame, hope and regret. I couldn’t trust my own memories. Good or bad.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I found it interesting that those who believed themselves righteous only ever cared about those who agreed with them, and were keen to let those who didn’t suffer whatever brutal fate.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“It was never a good sign when charismatic men started talking apocalypse.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I should have stayed estranged from my family. Bad time, black sheep? An understatement.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“It’s a cruelty of life that we can never protect our own innocence. We can only watch ourselves lose it in retrospect. Scream at memories.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I was tired of being bitter, tired of my cynicism. It had never saved me from heartache, never insulated me from hurt. It had only made me miserable. Maybe I wanted to be the kind of person who, in spite of everything, still chose to have a little fucking faith. To have some hope. Not to give up.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“Maybe the world was a rotten place full of self-serving assholes. Maybe I’d had bad luck with people. Maybe I was the problem; maybe I wasn’t. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t willing to condemn them all to a cruel fate, because, I knew then, it just wasn’t who I was. I wasn’t hateful. I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t my father’s daughter.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“The poor starve. The rich ask, Why are you hungry? If you were just like me, you wouldn't be hungry. They have their portraits done. Let history remember the rich. Let their houses stand. The castles to visit. The videos of celebrities giving tours of their multimillion-dollar homes for Architectural Digest while wearing pins in honor of war-torn countries that are really to say, I would give none of this up for them. Wait. Wait. Wait to see which pale man has the most eager fingers. Who presses the button first? Who presses it next, in retaliation? Boom! Nuclear annihilation!”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I’d been in obscurity for so long, I’d forgotten sometimes it’s harder to be around people who know you than people who don’t.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I had been out of sync with myself earlier, with my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Maybe it'd happen again. Or maybe there was another version of me hiding in the walls of the house, the ghost of my former self, forever trapped in a shitty childhood.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“wanted to live enough life to render everything in my past small and insignificant.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“Your burger was a cow.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“Only you could pull it off, with that face. Well, your mother, too.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“How could I have known then? How can anyone know when ruin wears the disguise of love?”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“Maybe that’s all life is. Wanting something until you get it.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“A man slammed his suitcase into my shin, sending me reeling into a nearby trash can. He gave a frustrated grunt, shook his head at me as if it’d been my fault. “So sorry, sir,” I called after him. “The audacity of me to have mass.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“So many jewels—stars burning, burning, so desperate to be seen, seeking attention over light-years. Easy to forget stars are mortal; they’re born, and they die. They shine for legacy.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“What I do know, what I've learned the hard way, is that we don't get to choose our parents or the circumstances we're born into. We can't change our blood. But it shouldn't determine our fate. It doesn't. We still get to choose who we are, who we want to be.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“Or did they believe because the faith was all they knew? Because their parents taught them it was right and true, like their parents had taught them. Brainwashing, but with holy water. Spanning generations. Centuries”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“Why were they so willing to believe in something so ridiculous? To shirk science and logic for imaginary idols?”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“I didn’t ask questions, because I was young and never knew any different, and because even then I could sense how fragile it all was. I was afraid that if I breathed the wrong way he’d disappear, never return. That I’d have my father privileges revoked and it’d be on me, by my mistake.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep

“To cope with my parents, minimize the damage of my mother’s coldness and my father’s absence. I’d never know which parts of me were me, versus the traits I’d inherited, and what the family I’d been born into had done to me—how it had bent and shaped me when I was young and malleable.”
― Rachel Harrison, Black Sheep