The Wake Up Quotes

“The air of the islands, she believed, was different than the air of other regions of the world. It engulfed her now, carrying with it flavors of sun-drenched soil and foam-flecked sea, aromas of virgin woods and naked rocks, its tang of citrus trees and its fizz of foreign wine-misted lips. It carried in its pockets the sounds of children's laughter, the clatter of drunken brawls, the mandolin music thrumming sensually from decades-old cassette tapes in the colorful souvenir shops where old ladies and young women waved at passersby. It came from near and far, rebounding off the blue-white flag strapped to ferry masts rearing above the sparkling waters, glinting in the brown-eyed winks and twirled mustaches of the locals.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“You have that look -- the look of all runaways. But I will tell you what I tell my children. The caged bird sings sadly and dies quickly. Your heartstrings are not shoelaces -- they were never meant to be knotted. It is important to set things free. You begin with yourself. And maybe a tissue.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“No one had fought back. His friends had not retaliated and morphed into monsters. They had fallen like flies. Perhaps such evil did not lurk in the others. Perhaps he's been wrong. The thought came to him suddenly, stopping his heart as if he'd been yanked from the dance hall and flung countries and time-zones away only to crash into arctic waters. It marked the end of something, as revelations often do.
He was the monsters.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“Rage swallowed remorse. Rage drop-kicked self-pity. Rage murdered sorrow. And then, like blood-red wine tucked into the refrigerator, rage chilled to become cold, calculating anger. Anger was a creature that arrived on her doorstep with a suitcase full of strategy and vengeance. It tipped its hat at her and hopped into her brain. It knocked on the Logic Department's door. It found a broken mirror somewhere in the crevices between her hippocampus and her hypothalamus, and it was wondering if somebody had misplaced it.

No retaliation? It scoffed. Think again, missy.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“You wouldn't know, looking at him, that he'd been to Hell and back. He kept his scars tucked away beneath his clothes and behind his eyelids.
Survivors often do.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“She turned to face the door, knowing what she would find instead.

"What big eyes you have," she whispered.

"The better to see through your lies," he said.

"What large hands you have..."

"The better to strangle you with, my dear..."

"What sharp teeth you have..."

"The better to drink your blood with," he said with a laugh. "Is that what you expect me to say? I know this story better than you do. The wolf wins in my version."

She thought of the black wolf she once knew in another life, a black wolf that never willingly left her side. "The wolf wins in mine, too.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“The metal door began to roll open as she held her breath. Its parts creaked like the bones of a giant roused from his slumber, like a Lazarus that had hidden his flaming heart within fireproof walls, patiently sleeping as the comatose do.

The smell hit her first. Mold. Dampness. Cold lifeless things.

Within, there was a darker sort of silence, as if the building had been holding its breath for so long it had forgotten how to breathe.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“Emotions were beautiful like birds of paradise, seemingly fragile, surprisingly resilient, fleeting and lovely, with wings that could churn blood and claws that could rake souls.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“Do you remember bedtime as a child? I was terrified of the dark. I was terrified of the closed closet door that surely cracked open when I wasn't looking and spewed out ghouls and devils. I took care that no arms or legs protruded from the bed. I sometimes slept with the covers over my head. Sweltering, panting, barely breathing. Not even my hair exposed, lest a monster discover and devour me. I remember begging my father to check under the bed. I remember trying to explain how some monsters had invisibility cloaks. He would kiss my cheek and switch off the light.

We stop looking under the bed once we realize that the monsters are inside us.

It's funny how they transform. Suddenly they don't mind daylight. Suddenly they dress nicely, speak our language, and share our customs. They sit next to us on the metro and jog around our neighborhoods. They slip things into our drinks at parties and offer us jobs. Sometimes we spot them, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we even do the unthinkable: we invite them to our bed. As adults, we burn down the sanctuaries we created as children. Our inner child freaks out, but its screams are drowned by our moans as our monsters bring us to orgasm.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“The best conversations happen in the dead of night. So always choose the night shift. It might shorten your life, but you meet the most wonderful people.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“The black snow on her friend's face stole him from her in fragments, trying to spirit him away.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“What happens when you mask your face, your weakness, your truth? What happens when you've worn a mask to the point that it is more skin than shield? Ink taints water. Mask fuses with skin. If someone tries to pry it off, they could unglue most of your face along with it.

That could get ugly.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“In the center of a garden reared a tree, glinting golden in the darkness, peppered with flowers that smelled of blood. The great yawning hollows of the trunk invited her in, promising a snug sanctuary. "They will suffocate you like a pillow of sand and you will never emerge alive," a chittering voice cried out. The patterns engraved on the tree's bark dizzied her eyes. "If your finger brushes against them, you'll know true madness." She glanced away from the bark, her eyes caught by a movement in the branches. A squirrel scurried down the trunk towards her. It didn't seem to be bothered that its tail was swathed in flames, or that something had eaten away at half of its rot-black face and torso. Death's pet project bared its teeth at her. "Do you really want to be here?”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“Hope didn't wait to be attacked. Hope was a suicidal creature.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“She found a second blanket in the closet and curled up on the bed, feeling like the discarded toy of a spoiled child. She found a strange sort of comfort in the heat of her misery as the cold chilled her tears. In time, she would look up words like 'doormat' and 'wimp,' with Merriam-Webster definitions that would expose her to the faulty clockwork of her heart.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“When your legs and arms are being torn from your body, you console yourself that you've not yet been beheaded. Of course, right? When your nerves are being extracted strand by strand and your flesh is being dried drop by drop, you simply see past the blood and the bones and think: Hey, at least they haven't torn me apart at the cellular level yet.
Unnerving logic.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“Fireflies were like fairy tales. They appealed to the young, the old, and the imaginative. In a world of detestable insects, these bugs were the exception. They had an adorable way of flying so whimsically despite their butts being on fire.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“It wasn't the darkness that killed people. It was the people who carried the darkness within them that did.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“Most people feared the darkness. Some people feared, more wisely, the things within the darkness.

Gabriel feared both, and with good reason. He walked anyway. That had always been his way. He had a complicated history with the woodlands of the world. He'd met his share of the Cyclops and the Circes that lurked within.

And the world never seemed to run out of monsters.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“He was not her sole companion. She had her demons, too.

You can't run from them, as Lexi discovered. Changing cities doesn't help either; you carry them along inside you. You just wake up one day, fed up, and decide to snuggle with them instead. You invite them along as you go about your day, balancing them on your shoulder as you would a toddler, but with very strict conditions: You will not set fire to my hair. You will not take candy from strangers. You will not tie me up in chains while I sleep. You will behave.

And Lexi's demons, allowed to come close, sat on her shoulder. They waved to the angels perched on her other shoulder and struck up a conversation with Lexi.

'What's that noise?' her demons asked, sidling close to her ear.

'Oh, that?' Lexi massaged her temples. 'It's the air whistling through the hole in my heart.'

'You're afraid,' they taunted.

'I am,' she admitted. 'Afraid of the sky falling. Afraid of the tight-rope snapping. Afraid I can't dance well enough on the edge. Afraid there are no hands to steady my body. Afraid of hands that wish to cage my heart.'

'Coward,' the demons goaded.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“The road swerved left. The crash of waves morphed into the rumble of thunder, and the black asphalt tapered to become a slender stretch of rope. She followed it up into the darkness, night spilling around and below her as someone knocked over the ink-jar of the sky and scattered its liquid to the furthest corners, dislodging silver shards of moon that bounced off her umbrella.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“Dad?" she said.

"Do you want some coffee?" he asked. "Are you okay?"

She shook her head. No.

"There are only so many hours you can sleep in a stranded vehicle." He glanced at the dashboard of her car, then at the untouched receipt--her receipt--sticking out of the machine a few feet away like a white tongue. "There's only so many times you can try to resurrect the dead. You can sit there all you want but you're not going anywhere. And, stuck as you are, you'll be forced to think about it, forced to wake up at some point, forced to depart or die here.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“The pink elephant barged into the room and trumpeted so loud she thought the ceiling might collapse. Memories erupted from its trunk. She snatched them up helplessly, holding them up to the light, studying their colors and pixels of pain.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“She raised her middle finger to their smiles. She downed vodkas and cocktails and stumbled through the crowds and the streets, occasionally stretching up to touch a star in the black ice cap of the sky, shaking her hand and blowing on her fingers when it burnt her.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“The butterflies were performing circus tricks now, flying through hoops of fire. Lexi had read about infatuation once. Some writer had doused the romantic notion of winged insects. He'd said the funny feeling was simply the motion of common sense fleeing the body. It made more sense, in a world where few things did. Lexi smiled, reveling in the feeling.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“He wasn't the sort of person you interacted with and fluttered away from; he was the type of man you fell for. People got hurt when they got attached to other people, because people always left or were taken away. Falling in love, therefore, was just a set-up for inevitable failure.

She knew all this. But logic is fallacy when it spars with instinct. So she fell anyway.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“Something new prowled these floors, something that sucked the space into its lungs and pressed up against people's eyeballs. She felt the darkness and told herself she could walk away from it, forgetting how difficult it is to run from that which you cannot see coming.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“One little girl didn't mind the fading sun. Her mittened hands sculpted a snowman, happy to work without distractions. She whispered apologies as she thrust a carrot into his face, assuring him it was for the best and he'd be able to breathe much better now, just try and see.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“The wind breezed through the neighborhoods and pushed the hands of household clocks. Waves rose and fell with the regularity of a sleeping god's snores. People cupped snowflakes in their hands, scraps of divinity that melted at the human touch, as ephemeral as time. Seasons are only man-made time-traps after all. We can call them what we please.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“When your legs and arms are being torn from your body, you console yourself that you've not yet been beheaded. Of course, right? When you nerves are being extracted strand by strand and your flesh is being dried drop by drop, you simply see past the blood and the bones and think: Hey, at least they haven't torn me apart at the cellular level yet.
Unnerving logic.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up