I Do Know Some Things Quotes

“When I die, I will come in fast and low. I will stick the landing. There will be no confusion. The dead will make room for me.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“To them I was Hamlet in a long line of Hamlets. My problems were unimpressive and not unique. I had a grief counselor, like everyone, and a suicide counselor, because I had said the wrong thing...The suicide counselor said the people who hadn't shown up weren't going to show up, that the ones who had stopped coming would not be coming back.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“Say it plain, see if it's powerful. Say it slant, see if it's possible. Distraction, diversion, the clumsy decorations? Cheap magic. A smoke screen. Without the truth, there can be no fiction. Nonsense needs reason. To push against. I didn't howl at the moon, I yelled at a lamp. Subject verse. Someone wept. Some things are more important than poetry.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“A dog bites down a stick of dynamite and takes off running. They are going to explode together. Imagine: making someone feel like that, making them lose their mind like that.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“If a harp lay down and fell asleep and you bludgeoned its dreams with felted hammers then you would have a piano.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“After meds, I realized I was just another empath in a Denny’s, sinking onion rings in ranch dressing in the middle of the night.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“His stepfather always watched me closely. He saw the wariness one learns from being neglected—eating too fast, being overly grateful, always knowing who was in the house: their motivations, moods, and locations. With his stepson he was attentive. With me, on the occasions when our paths crossed privately, he spoke with the gentle unavailability one reserves for creatures that are wounded and backed into a corner.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“I was no longer the authority on myself.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“Music was too much to handle. It was overwhelming, but I was afraid of the silence. In the silence, I could hear my thinking: the constant narration of how damaged I was.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“I started new dreams without finishing the last, sifting in sleep what I couldn’t sift in daylight.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“I turned in sleep, shouldering into the dark, glossy water.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“The horse wasn't actually real until I killed it.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things

“I want to found a city, not reconstruct one. Houses so new there are no mice in the walls. It’s a poverty of imagination—the fear of improvisation, the insistence on undamaged goods.”
― Richard Siken, I Do Know Some Things