Alone With You in the Ether Quotes

“She had hands that itched to be busy, to be occupied by something or another, but it seemed every time she sat down lately, her mind simply went blank.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“In Regan’s opinion, marriage was very easy to do if you simply operated in totally separate spheres.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“If there was one thing Regan would willingly say about herself, it was that she was an ornament, a novelty, a party trick. She was the center of attention when she wished to be, quick-witted and charming and impeccably dressed, but those types of girls grew dull when there were no eccentricities or blemishes. The world loved to take a beautiful woman and exclaim at the charm of her single imperfection”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“He didn’t ask for very much from Regan, which was ideal, because she didn’t typically give very much. If they tired of each other, they simply didn’t speak. They were good at occupying each other’s spaces. She often thought of him as an accessory that matched with everything; some sort of magical mood ring that adapted to whatever persona she had currently filled.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Regan’s consistent unreachability was once a carefully honed practice that had gradually become a habit. When Regan was younger, she had coveted the prospect of a call or a text; it meant, primarily, attention. It meant that she had filled the vacancy of someone else’s thoughts. Then, after a while, she began to understand that there was power in devaluing her worth to others. She started to place limits on herself; she wouldn’t check her phone for ten minutes. Then for twenty. Eventually she’d space hours between, making a point to direct her thoughts elsewhere. If others were forced to wait for her time, she thought, then she would not have to owe so much of herself to them. Now, Regan is so very talented at being completely unreliable that people have started to call it a weakness. She takes some pride in their misconceptions; it means people can always be fooled.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Aldo disliked the sensation of being asleep. It felt something very close to being dead, which was an uncomplicated and therefore troubling state of being.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Aldo was similarly single-minded, even if he was many-thoughted.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Generally speaking, Aldo was unlikely to get into any sort of street fight, much less a formal boxing ring. He just liked the reminder that, from time to time, he retained the option of adrenaline and pain.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“even when it was never exactly the same, it seemed to follow a consistent orbit. Everything leading to everything else, following the same patterns if you happened to look closely enough. Sometimes Regan felt she was the only one looking”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“His brain didn’t approach things in an easily observable way; he unintentionally skipped steps and was then forced to move backwards, usually by the sound of some throat-clearing distress at his back.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Aldo found it difficult to focus on something that required so little of his attention;”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“He had learned over time to keep his thoughts to himself, which was most easily accomplished if his brain activity was split into categories. His mind was like a computer with multiple applications open, some of them buzzing with contemplation in the background. Most of the time Aldo did not give others the impression he was listening, a suspicion that was generally correct.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“She’d never enjoyed porn, finding it kind of… upsettingly unsubtle. She preferred mystery—craved it like a drug—so she pulled up a password protected note on her screen.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“if she believed in impossibilities she would have believed it to be impossible. Fortunately or unfortunately, she believed in everything and nothing.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Aldo was not a ‘right now’ sort of person.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“He had been bad before. He would be bad again. It would cycle and fluctuate the same way the weather would. It would rain in two weeks, he thought.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“His work would never be done, and that alone was tragic, exhilarating, perfect.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“It was intimate because it was not. It was religious because it was not. It was beautiful because, at the heart of it, it was twisted and soulless and ugly, and therefore it mirrored something masochistic in Regan herself.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“With Regan, everything came down to sacredness.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“There was a single moment responsible for every sequence thereafter.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“The drive seemed longer, the distance farther, the traffic noisier. Everyone was honking and it stung Aldo’s ears. He checked Regan’s expression frequently, constantly, relieved to find a placid, pensive smile on her face as she wondered out her window, but then checking again just to be sure he wouldn’t miss it if it faded. Just to make sure he could fix it the moment an unpleasant thought crossed her mind, which it didn’t, but just in case it did, he never left her. She must have felt his eyes on her; she turned and kissed him twice, then shoved his face away.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone with You in the Ether

“That was all art was, wasn’t it? The blatant exposition of the inside of her head.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone with You in the Ether

“The thing about women and clothes was, in Regan’s mind, that nothing was ever a permanent expression; it wasn’t any sort of commitment to being this type of girl or that one, but purely today, I am. It was just whichever version of herself she wanted to project for the time being.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone with You in the Ether

“Sometimes,” he began slowly, “doesn’t happiness seem … fake? Like it might be something someone invented. An impossible goal we’ll never reach,” he clarified, “just to keep us all quiet.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone with You in the Ether

“we have agreed, collectively, that to proceed without knowledge or understanding is a stupid kind of bravery, an impulsive kind of blindness, but that to be alone without wonder or curiosity is to chip away any possible value we might discover in existing.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“She’d outgrown her container and yes, she still inhabited her body, and temporarily so did he, but they were more than that. This was vastness—and was it him? Was it her? Was it them? Maybe it was all of it, maybe it was everything, maybe he and she were a little speck of everything when they were touching like this, bound to tiny particles in the air. To things that science had yet to find or name or see.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“She’s surprised he even believes in love.
He doesn’t, not really, but it’s the closest thing to having a name for the concept. It’s like how time only exists within their understanding of what time is, even though time is probably something else entirely. But they still call it time, because that’s what everyone agreed to call it.
How… incredibly theoretical of him.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“Her ship? It’s always sinking, she hates it, it’s either sinking or it’s exploding, either way it never seems to be going anywhere.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“I’m actually not very good at anything in particular. I’m not really very smart. People don’t know it right away, but eventually they sort it out. Sometimes I think: No wait I’m lying, all the time I think: Everyone else is right about me. I am the common factor, aren’t I? So that must mean everyone else is right.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether

“She already knows his brain is something foreign to her, something that contains little pockets of mysticism that she will never understand, no matter how intently she can dig her greedy tendrils.”
― Olivie Blake, Alone With You in the Ether