We Could Be Rats Quotes

“I decided that deep down we're all who we were when we were kids. I think being a teenager is about hiding all your quirks and contorting yourself to fit in and impress people, and being an adult is about re-finding who you were when you were eight years old.”
― Emily Austin, We Could Be Rats: A Novel

“I think one of the benefits of growing up with a sibling is having a witness. It’s nice to have someone to cross-reference your childhood with.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“When you're a kid, you assume you're just getting a taste for all the memorable experiences life has in store for you, but the truth is, most people don't spend countless nights running through the streets with their friends. They spend a handful of nights doing that if they're lucky.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I get this desperate feeling sometimes. Like I'm a kid banging inside the cage of my adult body, dying to escape to the moon.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I'm not sure there is a way to be alive without upsetting people. We're all in this web together, aren't we? Everything we do tangles everybody else together.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“Sometimes it's kinder to let people believe they are helping you even when they aren't.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I think my mom didn’t understand how I could be gay because she wasn’t. Her lens on the world was different from mine. She viewed me being gay the way she would view herself being gay. The only reason she could come up with for why she would be is to get attention and bother people. She didn’t grasp that someone could genuinely experience the world differently than her.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I decided that deep down we’re all who we were when we were kids. I think being a teenager is about hiding all your quirks and contorting yourself to fit in and impress people, and being an adult is about re-finding who you were when you were eight years old.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I wanted to stay on the boat I was on. I felt like I had just gotten on it. I didn’t feel ready to hop onto a new one yet.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I’m not interested in making small talk with people who offend or insult me.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“Every word means more when there are fewer of them. Brevity is the soul of wit, or whatever. If I were able to pick just the right words for this, it would be brief. I have to add more words to make the words I've already written mean less.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“If I could have picked what I was born to be, I would be a fat little rat at a fair. I would ride the Ferris wheel all night. All the carnival lights would reflect in my happy, beady eyes. I would feast on candy apple cores, discarded peanuts, and melon rinds. I would spook ladies and carnival workers for kicks. When the lights went out, and the gates were shut, I would scurry around on the ground, rummage through trash cans, and squeak happily with my rat pals. I would live to be about two years old, which is as long as most rats live. I would get my money’s worth out of my little rat lifespan, and I would leave the earth happy to have been there.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I prefer black-and-white rules. I would prefer to be told to never lie, rather than be told I should lie sometimes. I think when rules are gray, we think about them too much. Nothing is really right or wrong, or good or bad when you think about it too much.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I was surprised by some of my feelings when she died. I knew I’d feel devastated, and I did, but there were other feelings I didn’t expect. One thing I really wrestled with was feeling like there was less love in the world for me. When she died, I felt a shift in the universe. It was more than her absence. I felt the cosmic void where her love for me used to be, like an empty stomach after puking. On top of feeling shattered by her absence, I felt less important with her gone, and also guilty for feeling that way. I wasn’t just mourning her life. I was mourning her love for me. When she died, I felt selfishly less important, and every time I lose someone, I’ll have less purpose. I will degrade in value the longer I live, until there is no point to me.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I was surprised by some of my feelings when she died. I knew I’d feel devastated, and I did, but there were other feelings I didn’t expect. One thing I really wrestled with was feeling like there was less love in the world for me. When she died, I felt a shift in the universe. It was more than her absence. I felt the cosmic void where her love for me used to be, like an empty stomach after puking. On top of feeling shattered by her absence, I felt less important with her gone, and also guilty for feeling that way. I wasn’t just mourning her life. I was mourning her love for me. When she died, I felt selfishly less important, and every time”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I have this deep sense that I am extremely old. Sometimes, I feel like I can remember being someone I’m not. Places I’ve never been before feel familiar. Foods I’ve never eaten taste like something I’ve tasted before.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“was surprised by some of my feelings when she died. I knew I’d feel devastated, and I did, but there were other feelings I didn’t expect. One thing I really wrestled with was feeling like there was less love in the world for me. When she died, I felt a shift in the universe. It was more than her absence. I felt the cosmic void where her love for me used to be, like an empty stomach after puking. On top of feeling shattered by her absence, I felt less important with her gone, and also guilty for feeling that way. I wasn’t just mourning her life. I was mourning her love for me. When she died, I felt selfishly less important, and every time I lose someone, I’ll have less purpose. I”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“College is bizarre. These scholarly”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“long. I always write too much when I’m confused. I ramble on and on”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“It must be strange to come upon a highway when you're a woodland creature. When there are woods on either side of a road, that road is inside a forest. It doesn't feel that way when you're driving, but if we were birds looking down, it would be clear that trees were cut down to pave a street. Geographically and ecologically, the habitat that the road is in is a forest. When raccoons or deer turn into roadkill, it's not because they went somewhere they shouldn't have. It's because there was an unnatural street in their woods.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“If God doesn't exist, I wonder if reincarnation does. If it does, I wonder if we are reborn again and again forever, or if we are reborn a certain number of times, and then expire. If that's the case, I think I'm on my last life. I have this deep sense that I am extremely old. Sometimes, I feel like I can remember being someone I'm not. Places I've never been before feel familiar. Foods I've never eaten taste like something I’ve tasted before.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“Sometimes, I thought it was better to lie to spare people having to endure my attempt to explain myself. Maybe that's a cop-out. Maybe I told myself that because it served me to think that way.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“Sometimes I think teenagers are viewed as dramatic and emotional because their souls are trying to rattle out of their bodies while they morph into swamp-monsters. Sometimes I think adults all feel just as intensely as teenagers do, but they're restrained inside their monster bodies.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“It's not that I was desperate to be someone else. It's not that I hated myself. It's just that when you get older, you are suddenly required to be the person you are. I felt like I was cast as a character I wasn't able to play. Maybe in a different setting, in a different production, with a different cast—I might have pulled it off.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I wasn’t the type of kid who wanted to be a teenager. I wanted to be a kid. I felt sort of trapped inside my new adolescent form”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“When I grew up, I realized I could never be a unicorn or a cobbler elf. I could never be a troll, an old man, an astronaut, a shark, or a rat. I would never be a girl who everyone liked. Those weren’t options for me. I was assigned the person I am. I had no choice. Even if I got extreme plastic surgery, covered myself in tattoos, buzzed all my hair off, amputated a leg, or gained or lost a hundred pounds—there were parts of me I could never change. I was assembled with the bones I came with.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“Sometimes it’s kinder to let people believe they are helping you even when they aren’t.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I might say you should try being like a rat at a fair. To be clear, I don’t mean that you should gorge yourself on carnival garbage. I just think you should try to collect days like that.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“When you’re a kid, you assume you’re just getting a taste for all the memorable experiences life has in store for you, but the truth is, most people don’t spend countless nights running through the streets with their friends. They spend a handful of nights doing that if they’re lucky.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats

“I just wanted to be another person. I found it difficult to be myself. It’s easier to pretend to be someone else than it is to be my real, authentic self. There are fewer stakes. When I’m not myself and people reject me, or I don’t fit in, I don’t have to take it personally. They weren’t really rejecting me. Being my real self makes me more vulnerable. When I operate in life as if I’m playing a game, losing feels less significant. I can just start over. Play again.”
― Emily R. Austin, We Could Be Rats