Unbroken Quotes

“Dad would call it my Sisyphus toll. Push a boulder up a hill, pretending it’s okay, and come nightfall it - and I - come crashing down. But he forgets the view each time I make it to the top.”
― Marieke Nijkamp, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

“It’d be easy to get lost here, in the spaces where I feel like a ghost. A spirit who couldn’t touch, or be touched. It’d be easy, so easy, to drown. But I keep swimming back towards the shore.”
― Marieke Nijkamp, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

“To find magic in the mending.”
― Marieke Nijkamp, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

“Gemma always carried matches she'd stolen. From diners and gas stations and kids at school. She never lit them; she said she liked their potential. She felt stronger knowing they were there, waiting for her to need them.”
― Kayla Whaley, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

“Gemma stood in there, one small girl in an open space, but she filled it; she belonged.”
― Kayla Whaley, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

“The word pain does too much work, you know? It’s like sorry, which really shouldn’t have to carry both “I sympathize” and “this is all my fault.”
― Marieke Nijkamp, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

“You’re brave.” Lorna said. “I’m not,” I assured her, trying not to bristle. I hate being called brave. It’s almost as bad as inspiring.”
― Marieke Nijkamp, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

“I never knew what it meant to fall in love, but I know what it means to create, and maybe the two aren't so different? Creation is an act of hope. You start with nothing but possibilities ... and you put them ttogether in an effort to discover perfection. To find magic in the melding.”
― Marieke Nijkamp, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

“But I live here, in this place. And I don’t know how to tell you that. I don’t want you to squirm, or take my hand and say it’s tragic. I don’t want you to roll your eyes as though I’m playing a macho game of one-upmanship: My pain can beat up everyone else’s adolescent pain, so I’ll just be over here in the corner, savoring the depths of my stoic suffering and shedding no more than a single tear when I listen to every single cover of “Hurt” and “Hallelujah” on repeat. No, you can’t help me. Don’t try to help me. Please try to help me.”
― Marieke Nijkamp, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens

“It wasn't the kind of love that filled my gut with butterflies or made me cover the pages in my notebook with my first name and her last. It wasn't marriage certificates or baby names. It was something older than that. Quitter. It was bones knowing bones, and being built with pieces of the same exploding star.”
― Kristine Wyllys, Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens