Siren Queen Quotes

“You must have been happy."
She puffed a soft breath between her lips, shrugged. "I was free. That's better than happy. Happy came later. Are you?"
"I will be," I said firmly. "Both.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“I already knew that being brave didn’t mean anything unless you were willing to do it again.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“We were stories that should never have met, or stories that only existed because we met. I still don't know.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“What's so great about being seen?" Tara demanded. "What's so important about that?"

She might have had the words for it, but I didn't. They locked up in my throat, about being invisible, about being alien and foreign and strange even in the place where I was born, and about the immortality that wove through my parents' lives but ultimately would fail them. Their immortality belonged to other people, and I hated that.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“What’s your name?” I asked her after making a study of her face for a half dozen years. There was a cragginess to her features, her strong nose and her sharp jaw. It would crash ships rather than launch them, but I never knew a woman who didn’t want to crash at least a few ships.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“Nemo's daughter held a light in her, pure and silvery, and it was not fueled on hate. It burned steadily in her heart, so strong that surely it would never go out, never be extinguished, and the siren could feel herself reach for that.

"Beautiful but not pure," my mind whispered while I begged. Nothing we had done in the shadows of the Friday fires was pure. It was better than that. It was true. It was everything I was and everything I could be—was meant to be—if only I dared. It twisted inside me, hungry and vicious and clever.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“I would never be adorable and bubbling over with praise for myself and others. Instead, I was still and cold, and had to hope that was enough.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“She smiled sweetly, and took my hand in hers. She smelled faintly of milk and honey and something warmer as well. Later, I realized that she was still very much on painkillers when we were having this conversation. “Of course it is, min skatt. Nothing’s hard but life, eh?”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“I wasn't good with other girls. I felt strange around them, all competition tangled with a desperate urge to please and belong.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“I'm curious, though, and my father said that if I could be curious instead of afraid, things would probably work out some kind of right.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“Women disappear, and even if you are famous, it can happen without a sound, without a ripple.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“Oberlin Wolfe and the riders were still somewhere in the fires, fighting and fucking and dancing to forget whatever price Oberlin paid to keep all this going. November second would come, though, and there would be no tithe or audience to hold back Oberlin’s hand.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“When I looked at Michel de Winter, old god that he was, I could see the worship in his eyes, a kind of helpless love that didn't even want to help itself. To see her was to love her, and a wanting rose up in me like an ache. I wanted someone to look at me like that; I wanted to change the world simply because I could.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“Men lived forever in their bodies, in their statues, in the words they guarded jealously and the countries they would never let you claim. The immortality of women was a sideways thing, haphazard and contained in footnotes, as muses or silent helpers. “But things are different here,” my mother always said. She had never set foot in China, would pass all her life on American soil, but she knew how different things could be. She clung to that, and so did we.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“I spent November haunted by October.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“There was a cragginess to her features, her strong nose and her sharp jaw. It would crash ships rather than launch them, but I never knew a woman who didn't want to crash at least a few ships.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“She was clever and determined. I could see it in her tigers, in the life she had built so far away from everything either of us had ever known. I needed a silver screen to give me a dream, but she had painted her own out of nothing at all.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“I wanted what Clarissa Montgomery had, the ability to take those looks, to bend them and to make them hers, to make the moment hers, to make the whole world hers if she wanted. I wanted that, and that want was the core of everything that came after.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“You are already betting on a small piece of forever...”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“Beautiful but not pure," my mind whispered while I begged. Nothing we had done in the shadows of the Friday fires was pure. It was better than that. It was true. It was everything I was and everything I could be—was meant to be—if only I dared. It twisted inside me, hungry and vicious and clever.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“What's so great about being seen?" Tara demanded. "What's so important about that?"

She might have had the words for it, but I didn't. They locked up in my throat, about being invisible, about being alien and foreign and strange even in the place where I was born...”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“If I couldn’t be ordinary, maybe I could be something better instead.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“Women disappear, and even if you are famous, it can happen without a sound, without a ripple. I have to assume that one night, when the stars were gleaming over-head, she met a devil on the road like so many of my friends did, and he offered her a spread of cards, flipping them between his pale fingers. Alcoholism, born-again reverence, madness, a quiet cottage, a noisy car wreck, a lonely house on the edge of the desert, a book she could use as a tomb, a single line etched in the boardwalk, they would have flickered by, and taking a deep breath, she would have closed her eyes and chosen.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen

“The way the beautiful Black woman spoke, however, I started to wonder. If I couldn’t be ordinary, maybe I could be something better instead.”
― Nghi Vo, Siren Queen