Burn Our Bodies Down Quotes

“But it’s not love, to give your wounds to someone else.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“I love her so much more when she's not here.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“I am supposed to be quiet, I am supposed to be good, but I was born at war and I can only keep from fighting for so long.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“Keep a fire burning; a fire is what saves you.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“But you’re stronger than me, Margot. You are. You bore what I never could.” And the thing is, I know she means it like praise. Like pride. But it isn’t to me. Because yes, I bore this. I fixed it, but there’s a voice in my head, one I’ve never really heard before, and it says, I shouldn’t have had to.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“That yes, it’s exactly what they think, and nothing like it, and a hundred other things at once. I will always wish I were hers, and I will always want to be only my own. I haven’t found a way yet to make the two fit.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“Everything in my life, a gift and a wound at the same time. When will anything just be what it is?”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“I shouldn’t have had to be strong. Not like that. I should have been able to break. Maybe one day all that strength can just be a gift my mother gave me, and not the tool I used to survive her. But I don’t think it’s today.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“I came here for Gram. For a family that might love me. And I could have it. I could stay here, I could wrap myself up in my last name and watch the mess we’ve made swallow the whole town. Watch what happened to Tess happen to a hundred other people, and one day, one day, have a daughter of my own, and pass it on to her. Isn’t that what I want? To be somewhere only I can belong? But it’s not love, to give your wounds to someone else. I won’t be part of it. Not anymore.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“And maybe it's spite or maybe it's love but I can't really tell them apart anymore.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“Mostly, though, you learn how to be loved without any proof.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“You mean you got her,” Mom says, and there, there, that’s the weak spot I have to keep aiming at. “It’s not worth it. I know you think you understand, but she can’t ever give you enough to make up for what she takes.” “Oh, I understand that,” I say. “I learned it from you.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“don’t mind. It’s about time love left a mark on me.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“I don't think the past ever really leaves, in Phalene. It breathes. It holds on.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“She’s right. I have decided that protecting this place is worth more than anything else. I have let Fairhaven wrap its arms around me, because nothing ever has before. But something isn’t good just because it wants me, is it? Gram’s not better than Mom. Her, kneeling in front of me, calling me her own—that’s just the other side of the coin. One day, I told myself, one day you’ll have to let go. Maybe that’s now.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“Too many days laid out in a line. Nothing to put inside them.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“I’m on my way to being brand new.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“(...) if understanding a person meant I had to forgive them.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“She’s spent my whole life watching me grow, watching me turn into her, into Gram, into the sister she killed. Even if she didn’t know exactly how deep the sameness runs, even if she doesn’t now, it’s there in our faces. An echo in our voices. I don’t think I’d reach for me either.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“How could Gram do this? How could she come here and turn this place to ruin? Lives, people, real things in a real world and Gram took them in her hands like they were game pieces on a board. Tossed them aside.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“everything since the morgue was a dream, a fever, and now I’m here, back in my body, alive with anger. “She didn’t do it alone,” I say, leaning across the table. “Katherine? The girl? And you’re standing there like you haven’t lied right to my face.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“Vera denies all knowledge of this girl. We have no idea where she came from. But I’m fairly certain that somebody set that fire on purpose, and it ended up killing her. And I think I’m beginning to see how this fits together, except”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“And we love him,” Mrs. Miller says. “But until you live under your own roof, you’ll ask me or your father before you invite someone in.” She glances at me and Gram. “To stay the night,” she adds, clearly for our benefit.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“My sister. She has to be. She looked exactly like me, and she was on your land. And I know you said you didn’t know what the police were talking about, I know that, but we’re not with them anymore, and you can be honest with me. You can just tell me you were keeping her.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“Tess, on the other hand, looks absolutely delighted. I remember how she sounded, talking about Phalene, talking about how boring it was. Some entertainment at last. It makes me a little ill.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“When you know that no matter what, you can’t be touched by something like this. Tess is in no danger. She never has been, but she certainly isn’t now, not when it was me the police kept pinned between them. Me, with a matching body out on the road. “You really do believe me, then?” I ask.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“Sometimes I catch her about to cry. I used to think maybe it was that I reminded her of my father—the man she never talks about, the man who must have given me something. But then I stopped thinking about him at all. Started wondering about where Mom came”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“If we die it will be together, if she dies I am going with her”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“They turned off the electricity that month, but it was worth it. To her, anyway. And me, I went to school, and I came home, and I did my homework with a flashlight between my teeth. Made a life for myself inside the mess of my mother’s head, just like always.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down

“I wonder if she's feeling the same thing I am. Like I'm too much, too clumsy, and too blunt to live in a house of white carpet and delicate words.”
― Rory Power, Burn Our Bodies Down