Opium and Absinthe Quotes

“To be surrounded by books, by thoughts, by places and people and things that she had not yet met—it was a haven unlike any other.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“So long as I can learn about this precious, extraordinary, and occasionally heartless world, I can be content.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Stories are how the world evolves.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“The clouds were a perfect white on turquoise. How rude of the sky to be so blue and pretty when Lucy couldn’t admire it. Such a thoughtless sky.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Forgetting is an act of survival. We are women, Mathilda. We endure to survive.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Defeat is particularly lethal early on in any journey; don’t let it be your compass”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“newsies’ strike and found out that all those events occurred in 1899,”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“syringe. “Cheers to you.” Tillie took the syringe, and Tom turned away. She could use her arm, but unbuttoning the ten pearl buttons of her sleeve was too difficult with a single hand. Instead, she pulled her petticoats and silk skirt up her thigh, not caring that she was an unmarried woman in the presence of an unmarried man. Against her pale skin, there were tiny bruises everywhere, like a field of ill-looking poppies. Tillie found a new spot, slipped the needle beneath her skin, and pushed the medicine in. She sighed and handed the syringe back to Tom, who drew up a dose for himself.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Housework can be deadly,”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“asked Dr. Seward to give me a little opiate of some kind . . . I hope I have not done wrong, for as sleep begins to flirt with me, a new fear comes . . . Here comes sleep. Good-night. —Mina Harker”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“A woman’s mind is ever in need of being uncaged.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Cosmetics had been used to make her skin porcelain white. A blush of pink had been dusted onto her cheeks, and her lips were reddened with salve.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“How rude of the sky to be so blue and pretty when Lucy couldn’t admire it.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Humans needed meat and vegetables and desserts.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Everyone was always smoothing away the ripples that Tillie created.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Opiates are for broken bones, not broken hearts.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“No woman lives a life unscathed. It’s what makes us strong. We are broken and mended, remade every time. We must, or it destroys us.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“I love my little oubliette.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Exceptionally scandalous. Tillie would like to embroider that on her lapel.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“For life be, after all, only a waitin’ for somethin’ else than what we’re doin’; and death be all that we can rightly depend on. But I’m content, for it’s comin’ to me, my deary, and comin’ quick.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Don’t give up before you try. Defeat is particularly lethal early on in any journey; don’t let it be your compass.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“There are darknesses in life and there are lights; you are one of the lights.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the original book—was released in the United States in 1899. I thought, Huh.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Morphine addicts, also called morphinomaniacs, were oftentimes wealthy women being treated for all sorts of ailments. When heroin came on the market at the end of the century, it was thought not to be addictive. The original manufacturer was Bayer (as in the Bayer that makes aspirin today). These snippets of medical history were both fascinating and sadly still timely, given our opioid addiction crisis today.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, cowritten by me and my journalist friend Nate Pedersen”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Stoker’s Dracula, by Leonard Wolf—an amazing compendium of illustrations, photos, and notes that brought an incredible depth to the original story.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Dracula and Mina share absinthe together. The scene”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“Chlorine, or Allene,”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“her female descendants do, in fact, have as much backbone and fire as she has.”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe

“oubliette”
― Lydia Kang, Opium and Absinthe