Roses and Rot Quotes

“Perhaps the only happily ever after is to survive to tell the story”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“This is what happens, when things are not quite a fairy tale.
You go into the woods to find your story. If you are brave, if you are fortunate, you walk out of them to find your life.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“Then, because glass slippers would have been a bitch to run in, I laced on a pair of boots, and went down to Ariel's room.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“Our pasts always haunt us. But sometimes the ghosts are friendly, and the memories they bring with them sweet as well as bitter.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“This is the thing about fairy tales: You have to live through them, before you get to happily ever after. That ever after has to be earned, and not everyone makes it that far.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“It's easier to see the places where things end. Endings are clear, endings are dramatic, endings are obvious events. A pair of panties, not yours, found, a slap of a hand across a face, a ring returned. Something that was, and isn't now.

Beginnings are hidden in the shadows of time, are gradual, are two half-glances in a dark bar. Tiny things that no one even notices, but that hold everything.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“You go into the woods to find your story. If you are brave, if you are fortunate, you walk out of them to find your life.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“There are stories where you must wear out your iron shoes to right a wrong, where children are baked into pies, where jealousy cuts off hands and cuts out hearts. We forget, because the stories end with those ritual words—happily ever after—all the darkness, all the pain, all the effort that comes before. People say they want a fairy tale life, but what they really want is the part that happens off the page, after the oven has been escaped, after the clock strikes midnight. They want the part that doesn’t come with glass slippers still stained with a stepsister’s blood, or a lover blinded by an angry mother’s thorns. If you live through a fairy tale, you don’t make it through unscathed or unchanged. Hands”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“But there is another thing about midnight. It is when illusions break. When you can see the truth beneath them, if you are looking. There is always a crack in the illusion, a gap in the perfection, even if it is only visible with the ticking of a clock. Midnight is when you look, if there is a truth you need to see. If you are brave enough to bear what you witness.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“A sister, she thought, was a half of a whole, a reflection in a glass, the echo of a heartbeat. One was not possible without the other.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“That doesn't mean that I would destroy those works, or that I'm not proud of having come out the other side. Our past art makes our present art as much as our past life makes us who we are now. In the end, if the art stands up, that's what matters.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“Practically raised by wolves, we had joked. The monster and the metaphor, and the way they match up that makes the double-edged word of wit. And then you realize what your words have done, and you weep because you're both bleeding.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“I don't like the idea of signs and portents. People like to say fate is inescapable, but I believe there's always an escape. We make our own luck,and we do that by bending our will and energy toward what we want. I think that if you look for an omen, you'll find one, and it will tell you exactly what you desire it to, for good or ill. It would have been easy, had I wanted, to think of that tiny, shimmering smudge as some sort of sign, but I didn't need it to be. I didn't need signs. I had myself.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“It wasn't that I couldn't say it. I could. But there are times that you don't speak, because silence hurts less. There was no need to reopen old wounds when we both wanted them healed.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“I’m convinced hell is actually an eternity of being a snowflake in Nutcracker.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“When you go somewhere to be alone with yourself and your art, the problem becomes that you are alone with yourself and your art. For”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“If you have an easy life, you don’t wake up and find yourself in a story.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“There are all sorts of things that look like love, that have its pleasures, that offer its heat and its tastes, and the queen enjoyed all of these things, her heart kept safe. But sometimes. Sometimes even a stone heart can beat. Love, when it is true, is a force upon which even stone can shatter.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“That was always the catch. Your past came with you to your art whether you wanted it to or not. It haunted you. If you had a fraught past, it was the question you always considered, and always had asked of you—would you change it, if you could? Would you trade bad for good, or even for normal, knowing that if you did, the things that mattered to you now might disappear along with the evils of the past? I”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“This is the thing about fairy tales: You have to live through them, before you get to happily ever after.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“This is the thing about fairy tales: You have to live through them, before you get to happily ever after. That ever after has to be earned, and not everyone makes it that far. There are stories where you must wear out your iron shoes to right a wrong, where children are baked into pies, where jealousy cuts off hands and cuts out hearts.

We forget, because stories end with those ritual words--happily ever after--all the darkness, all the pain, all the effort that comes before. People say they want a fairy tale life, but what they really want is the part that happens off the page, after the oven has been escaped, after the clock strikes midnight. They want the part that doesn't come with glass slippers still stained with a stepsister's blood, or a lover blinded by an angry mother's thorns.

If you live through a fairy tale, you don't make it through unscathed or unchanged. Hands of silver may be beautiful, but they don't replace the hands of flesh and bone that were severed. The hazel tree may speak with your mother's voice, but her bones are still buried beneath its roots. The dead are not always returned, and roses do not always bloom from graves.

Not every princess climbs out of her coffin.

Happily ever after is the dropping of the curtain, a signal for applause. It is not a guarantee, and it always has a price.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“Your past came with you to your art, whether you wanted it to or not. It haunted you. If you had a fraught past, it was the question you always considered, and always had asked of you. Would you change it if you could? Would you trade bad for good, or even for normal, knowing that if you did, the things that mattered to you now might disappear along with the evils of the past.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“There is a cruelty in a wish that comes true. It is weighed, it is measured, it is absolute. No less than the words that invoked it, but no more neither. This is the first thing she learned: Just because someone can love you doesn't mean they will. This is the second: It is worse to know that someone can love you and that they have chosen not to.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“But there are some truths that don't just cut you when you speak them, they stab the person listening, too. Better to not open the wounds.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“There was a difference between competent and good. Talent wasn't the only thing you needed to succeed, but it was still needed. And the cruelest thing was, regular crises of ego aside, if you were competent you can see the difference in your work. You knew how it stacked up, could measure the gaps between fine and good, and good and great. Not having enough talent seemed worse than not having any, because having a little meant having just enough to know what you lacked.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“It's easier to see the places where things end. Endings are clear, endings are dramatic, endings are obvious events. xxx

Beginnings are hidden in the shadows of time, are gradual, are two half-glances in a dark bar. Tiny things that no one even notices but that hold everything.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

“Once upon a time, all the clocks chimed midnight.

Cinderella flees from the ball as her illusion unweaves. Beauty races towards her Beast before the last echo of the clock falls silent.

Illusions fall. Magic ends. The clock chimes.

Nothing lasts forever, and midnight is a purposeful stop. A pause to remind you that there is always a clock ticking. There will never be enough time, and for every Beauty who saves her Beast, there will be a voiceless mermaid who dissolves into sea foam.

But there is another thing about midnight. It is when illusions break. When you can see the truth beneath them, if you are looking. There is always a crack in the illusion, a gap in the perfection, even if it is only visible with the ticking of a clock.

Midnight is when you look, if there is a truth you need to see. If you are brave enough to bear what you witness.

For just a moment, the smoke dissipates, the mirrors shatter, and the glamour is gone. All that's left is the truth of the story, the truth in your heart, your darkest secret.

A glass shoe abandoned on the stairs.

Once upon a time.

Tick.

Tock.”
― Kat Howard, Roses and Rot