Wake, Siren Quotes

“There's more than two to a story -- the doers, the done-tos, and the ones who interpret who's who.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“His eyes they held the most dangerous thing, they held the top of the sins. Indifference. Indifference. A vacancy where human care should be.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“You grow up to believe that if you say, Please pass the salt, a person will reach toward the shaker, grab it in his hand, and move it in your direction. But then one day some of us might learn that it can happen that you can say, Please pass the salt, and a person will jam his hand into the mayonnaise jar and fling a fistful of it at your face. All at once, words don't mean what they're supposed to mean.
I am a girl. My name is Io. I say no thanks, not me, stop please. But all at once, words do not matter. I do not matter.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“[...]
What happens when the boundaries dissolve? Yout borders mean nothing. What lives at the limits of loss? Of hate? What terrible place is that? Look at me. I have been. I know. Do not come to this place where everything is fanged and singed and whimpering.
[...]
No one deserves de horror that has washed my life. I do not matter. This country does not matter, not to me, not in this hour. Keep indifference out of you. [...]
You will hear my yowls in the night, I who am a dog. When the darkness hoards the day, you will hear my yowls and you will remember this sadness. This sadness without boundary, born from loss, born from the dissolving of all the borerlines that made a world make sense,. My howls, the howls of this dog you see before you, they will penetrate the soft edges of your brain while you sleep, and for a moment, as your dream turns sideways, we will not be separate. We will be as one.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“The water holds all of you”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“You are never, never too old to be changed by love.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“There's such a thing as too much love. It's possible to lose yourself.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“We were so alive together.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“Not all lives are large. Not all stories are sad.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“Translators build the bridges. The chasm between languages is a deep ravine of silence. So what can we do but trust that the translators' bridges are sturdy, will carry the weight of meaning from one side of the ravine to the other? But all these bridges are faulty. Hitches and chinks because one language cannot cross over to another language unaltered and unflawed.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“The act of art is metamorphosis.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“When men feel small they are dangerous.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“We are all swallowed up each moment into the whole history of new.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung

“[...]
What happens when the boundaries dissolve? Your borders mean nothing. What lives at the limits of loss? Of hate? What terrible place is that? Look at me. I have been. I know. Do not come to this place where everything is fanged and singed and whimpering.
[...]
No one deserves de horror that has washed my life. I do not matter. This country does not matter, not to me, not in this hour. Keep indifference out of you. [...]
You will hear my yowls in the night, I who am a dog. When the darkness hoards the day, you will hear my yowls and you will remember this sadness. This sadness without boundary, born from loss, born from the dissolving of all the borerlines that made a world make sense,. My howls, the howls of this dog you see before you, they will penetrate the soft edges of your brain while you sleep, and for a moment, as your dream turns sideways, we will not be separate. We will be as one.”
― Nina MacLaughlin, Wake, Siren: Ovid Resung