If I Fall, If I Die Quotes

“The Outside had taught him that there wasn't much difference between loving someone and being afraid for them. Loving a person meant need them to stay: alive, around. But the shadow that love can't help cast is fear: fear that they won't stay alive or around - fear they'll be reckless, or doomed, or just walk away and not consider you ever again. With love, you're scared it will disappear. With fear, you're scared it never will. The trick, Will understood now but would never quite manage to put into practice, was getting used to both of them at the same time. It was living in between.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“It's not a prison if you've built it yourself... It's a fortress.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“Being brave is never easy. That’s why it’s good for you.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“Being brave is never easy. That's why it's good for you.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“What is raising a child except lying? It begins with the first shhhh...everything is going to be...and only gets worse from there.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“The boy stepped Outside, and he did not die.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“And how dearly we depend on the lone muscle convulsing in our chests. On the two flimsy balloons that so narrowly rescue us from suffocation. On the wobbly paté in our heads that preserves our very selves. all of it so ad hoc, so absurd, so temporary.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“Watching the people you love get hurt is part of the deal.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“Surfers rode waves, which were already beautiful, but skateboarders made this beautiful: the ugly, discarded nooks and leftovers of a place, the abandoned, unused architecture that people preferred to ignore. Beneath their wheels, these dead places became sites of wonder.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“How easy it is for life to become tiny. How cleanly the world falls away. The subway platform in Toronto. That was the first. Will was a toddler then. Even today, "safe" in her bedroom, Diane still couldn't summon the incident in her mind without panic spreading in her like laughter in a crowd. She knew she'd brushed against true madness that day because it was huge and blunt and screaming.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“Painting a masterpiece was also destroying a canvas, sculpting was wrecking a good rock, drawing dulling a good pencil forever.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“You can smash a snow globe with a ball-peen hammer and be disappointed that the glass is actually plastic and the snow actually ground-up Styrofoam. • You can laminate anything by winding it in plastic wrap before a five-minute tumble on Cotton in the dryer. • You can microwave a lightbulb for nearly twenty beautiful seconds as it turns in there like a pink comet before it finally goes supernova. • You can safely remove your Helmet and whack your head repeatedly on the drywall, weaving an orange velvet into your vision, before you manage to leave a dent. • You can cover a wall dent by hanging a masterpiece over it and claiming that you need the work at eye level to properly appreciate it. • You can simulate immortality by sticking a rubberhandled flathead screwdriver directly into the outlet and only trip a breaker. • You can ride the laundry basket down the carpeted stairs like a mine cart four times until it catches and ejects you to the bottom, where you strike your elbow and it swells red as a hot-water bottle. • You can safely light the fluff on your sweatpants with a barbecue lighter and send flame rolling over your legs like poured blue water, leaving a crispy black stubble. • You can halt a fan if you thrust your hand into the blades bravely—only when you hesitate will your knuckles be rapped. • You can stick the chilly steel tube of the vacuum to your belly and generate a hideous yet painless bruise, and these pulsating circles when placed carefully can form an Olympic symbol that lasts well into a second week. Of course his mother’s catching wind of any of”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“But is there a greater, more sustaining joy that walking in a city?... Even the ugliness was important, the seediness, the homeless, the filth - it needed to be acknowledged, even to children, so they didn't grow into princes.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“Though they never spoke, their daring was a bond, a pact. Will now saw something saintly in Jonah's silence. He hid his voice the way Will's mother hid her body, except Jonah made himself the place he never left, which Will envied but couldn't emulate, because having spent his whole life Inside, he couldn't keep his mouth shut.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die

“Examining them now up close, Will decided he didn't care much for trees. Too showy, too unruly, too large - things that had a shape and didn't at the same time. It took only ten minutes for him to realize he mostly distrusted nature: the wasted bits and pieces everywhere, the lewd odors, the imperfect edges, everything unfinished somehow, as though assembled hastily from what was lying around. Also, the ground was damp, and there was nowhere to nap if he got tired. He preferred the nature in books his mother read him at bedtime: the ambulatory forests of Middle Earth, the sapphire bathwater seas of Jacques Cousteau.”
― Michael Christie, If I Fall, If I Die