The All-Consuming World Quotes

“We navigate by capitalism. Always had, probably always will. And one of the things about capitalism is it demands we think of our lives as in deficit. Not enough time, not enough material possessions, not enough luxuries. Not enough anything. Because contentment doesn't sell. Desire does.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The All-Consuming World

“Maya is older than the first sin, but she’s got nothing on Reyha, nothing on a life lived calm as deep water.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The All-Consuming World

“Finally, when Maya was so sure that Reyha’s composure is bulletproof, it fissures. It cracks along the bend of her mouth, her forehead. To Maya’s surprise, she experiences no triumph, only an apostate’s abashedness, like she’d defaced a god of small yet precious things.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The All-Consuming World

“The brain, pressed to contain every life experience, knows better than to do so. Instead of retaining every memory, it makes composites, deriving assumptions from repeated examples, and flattens decades into annotated summaries.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The All-Consuming World

“Aren't you worried we'll take a swing at your favorite person while you're out?’ says Constance with detached ritual. ‘No,’ says Maya, without hesitation, because like Circe, like any witch from any old fairy tale, Rita has them all under her spell, and until someone can kiss the wickedness from Rita's teeth, they'll be her dogs until the world breaks like a heart. ‘Not at all.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The All-Consuming World

“Rita flashes a winning smile down at the dog she calls Maya and good mutt that she is, Maya is immediately suffused by joy, chemical opiate of the chronically codependent.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The All-Consuming World

“Certain ideas are meant for profanation: the concept of other people’s property being sacred for one. But this kind of trauma? No, that’s holy. The past is a reliquary you keep buried unless told otherwise by the person who interred that hurt-stained horror.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The All-Consuming World

“She watches Verdigris from the bed, mouth full of the right words, all of them stillborn.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The All-Consuming World

“Through it all, she holds eye contact like it's a lifeline, although only the devil dead on his throne knows which one of them needs saving more.”
― Cassandra Khaw, The All-Consuming World