The Serpent King Quotes

“If you're going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“She's it. She's my everything. She's the standard by which I'll judge beauty for the rest of my life. I'll measure every touch to her breath on my skin. Every voice to her voice. Every mind to her mind. My measure of perfection. The name carved into me. If I could, I would lie with her under these stars until my heart burst.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“That wouldn't be a bad way to die...giving off light for millions of years after you're gone.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“I've made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Writing is something that you can learn only by doing. To become a writer, you need an imagination, which you clearly have. You need to read books, which you clearly do. And you need to write, which you don't yet do, but should.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“So when I watch trains, it makes me think about how much movement there is in the world. How every train has dozens of cars and every car has hundreds of parts, and all those parts and cars work day after day. And then there are all these other motions. People are born and die. Seasons change. Rivers flow to the sea. Earth circles the sun and the moon circles Earth. Everything whirring and spinning toward something. And I get to be part of it for a little while, the way I get to watch a train for a minute or two, and then it's gone.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“I want you to be careful in this world. My heart is wrapped up in you.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“What you call pride, I call courage.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“People live quiet lives and that's okay. There's dignity in that, no matter what you may think.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“We live in a series of moments and seasons and sense memories, strung end to end to form a sort of story.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Some fall in glorious ways. One green fields of battle as old warriors, surrounded by friends, fighting for their homes, fighting cruelty.

Some fall crawling in the dirt of Forrestville, Tennessee, in the dark, impossibly young and alone, for no good reason at all.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“The worst days spent with her were better than the best days spent without her.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Nothing stops when we’re gone,” Lydia said. “The seasons don’t stop. This river doesn’t stop. Vultures will keep flying in circles. The lives of the people we love won’t stop. Time keeps unspooling. Stories keep getting written.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“You're never safe from yourself. Your own blood will poison you.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“How is it every time we're talking about the real world, you manage to bring up fantasy, and every time we're talking about fantasy, you manage to bring up the real world?

Travis shrugged. "My fantasies are more interesting than the real world and machines and tools are more interesting than you guys' fantasies.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“I’m tired of watching children perish. I’m tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I’m tired of outliving those I shouldn’t be outliving. I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. I needed to say that out loud to somebody other than my cats. Please take care of yourselves, my young friends.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Wanting to believe something is powerful”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Because we should do things we're afraid of. It makes it easier every time we do it.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“She got up , walked around the table, and gave him a lingering hug, running her fingers through the back of his hair. She'd been finding more excuses to hug him lately.

"What was that for?" Dill asked.

"Because you looked like your heart stepped on a Lego.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Knight, proud in victory, proud in death. Let your name evermore be a light to those who loved you. Let white flowers grow upon this place that you rest. Yours was a life well lived, and now you dine in the halls of the Elders at their eternal feast.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Irrationality loves company.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Some fall in glorious ways. On green fields of battle as old warriors, surrounded by friends, fighting for their homes, fighting cruelty.

Some fall crawling in the dirt of Forrestville, Tennessee, in the dark, impossibly young and alone, for no good reason at all.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“There are books stacked high around them - the way opportunity and possibility are stacked around them.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“And if you’re going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Love deserves monuments, and this is the only kind I know how to build.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“I think lives are worth more than the sum of their parts,” Lydia said. “I don’t think it’s fair to measure them in accomplishments...”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“music was the only beautiful thing he owned”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“Lydia shook her head. "This is my life. Getting yelled at in a Walmart parking lot on a Friday night by somebody doing a bad impression of PG-13 fart-joke-movie comedian.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King

“We are a fallen species, spitting on the gift of salvation. Humanity is irredeemable.”
― Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King