Ballad for Jasmine Town Quotes

“Gods,” she said fervently into his neck. “I love this.”
“Even with the rain, and in a garden shed…”
“Yes, honestly, I love it. I feel…wild. Doing this in here, with you.”
“Wild. Huh. You make me feel domesticated.” When she laughed at the word, he clarified, “Safe.” He cupped her cheek. “Cared for.”
― Molly Ringle, Ballad for Jasmine Town

“On the tenth day, in the morning, a lazy but drenching storm rolled up from the tropics and settled itself over Miryoku. The rain hissed on the garden pavers and flooded the birdbaths till they spilled over. Thunder rolled around the edges of town.”
― Molly Ringle, Ballad for Jasmine Town

“Their eyes caught, and he felt his life pause, swing around, and open up to show him a path he hadn’t even known existed. For those lovely, suspended seconds, he thought he might even have the courage to step onto it.”
― Molly Ringle, Ballad for Jasmine Town

“This mixing, this living side by side, no, it hasn’t always been harmonious. Sometimes the mutual interest has been obsession rather than love, violence rather than cooperation. But those dark times are the exceptions. Our many types of people here—we’ve made it work, on the whole, have we not?”
― Molly Ringle, Ballad for Jasmine Town

“Well, if you think I should be forgiven because I didn’t mean to do what I did, then shouldn’t you be forgiven too?”
― Molly Ringle, Ballad for Jasmine Town

“But mattering to her alone wasn’t reason enough for a person to live. Rafi needed to know he belonged to more than just his lover, that many people cherished him and wanted him back. That he had a place in the world, just by virtue of being himself.”
― Molly Ringle, Ballad for Jasmine Town

“What could a person do, after realizing they are not enough despite having poured out all their energy and love? What could they do except lie on the ground and weep?”
― Molly Ringle, Ballad for Jasmine Town

“She’d had unsettling dreams like this.
'I’m wandering through Miryoku, but it’s not Miryoku. Or it is, but it’s been abandoned and overgrown, like no one’s lived here for decades. It’s become a dense forest with pieces of buildings showing through in spots. I hardly recognize anything. Fae and animals have moved in—there’s a raccoon family looking at me from an apartment window, a cluster of mushroom fae crawling all over a café sign—and it smells like wild plants and earth and flowers. It feels both familiar and unsafe, and it makes me so, so sad.”
― Molly Ringle, Ballad for Jasmine Town

“Isn’t that what all human art aims to do? Evoke empathy, whether pleasantly or violently?”
― Molly Ringle, Ballad for Jasmine Town