Blood on Her Tongue Quotes

“I can't help wanting to live. Like other creatures, I am hell-bent on surviving.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“You’re much brighter than you let on—and much meaner, though perhaps that’s simply because you’re unhappy, and you’re unhappy because you desire fiercely what you can’t have. You yearn and crave and want with such force, it seems to eat you up from the inside.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“There was beauty in it still, the way imperfect things can be beautiful, but it was a beauty of a dark and fading kind.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“Grief can make us do the most peculiar things.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“Well, I’ve changed. A pen through the eyeball will do that to a person.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“How horrifying. Is there anything more dangerous to a woman than to be beautiful when weeping?”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“Grief made people do strange things, yes. But it also made strange things happen to people.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“what was a person if not the sum of all they had ever thought and felt and lived through?”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“The scant autumn light was blunted and cooled by clouds so dark, they seemed bruised. It silvered the windows, which were awash with rain, and made running patterns on the wall. It was like sitting in a sea cave.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“Crying over spilled milk didn’t put it back in the bottle.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“Please, she thought, you must get well again, if not for your own sake, then for mine. I can’t do without you. You can have my blood, if you need it. You can have my flesh and bones, too. You can have it all, as long as it keeps you here.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“It was astonishing, really, how much work a death demanded.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“a little stitch of a frown marring her forehead like a thumbprint pressed into cooling wax. Her voice, like her movements, was laudanum languid.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“Signs were cheap when you went looking for them. Better just to focus on the task at hand.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.” Bram Stoker, Dracula”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“It didn’t matter that she was now a sick, sullen creature with only one eye. Lucy felt overcome with love for her twin in all her demanding, obsessive, insufferable imperfection.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“getting to the heart of her insanity shan’t solve it. That’s why it’s insanity—there’s no rhyme nor reason to it for those who don’t experience it. Besides, knowing something isn’t the same as solving it. I may know all there is to know about polio, but that won’t cure my leg, now, will it?”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“Finally,” she said. “I’m fucking starving.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“She imagined Hell as an eternal waiting room whose doors would lead to planes of pain hitherto not experienced.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“talking back is fun and witty when you’re a fancy lady but just plain disrespectful when you’re a maid, but I can’t help being anything else than the creature the good Lord made me.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“There was something almost sinfully pleasurable in caressing the dog’s ears”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“A girl needs to eat.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“was there anything more pleasurable in life than impressing a woman?”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“Well, no one has ever accused a journalist of having much decency. That would be deadly in their profession.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“It’s a hard thing, to be reduced to the abuse you’ve suffered.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“An unnatural act may very well lead to unnatural thoughts.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“Dying for someone is easy. If you really want to help her, stay alive.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“She gripped the poker and beat hard at the fire in the grate, releasing a cloud of warmth that smelled vaguely sweet; in a previous life, the logs had been fruit trees.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“a little stitch of a frown marring her forehead like a thumbprint pressed into cooling wax.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue

“She removed the ring, having to tug at it gently to make it slip over the joint. Already the gold had taken on the warmth of her skin, as if eager to please.”
― Johanna van Veen, Blood on Her Tongue