The Puppeteer Quotes

“The most to which we can ever aspire is not to break free from the cage that sits around us as some may believe, but that instead we might choose one that best suits our needs. A home for a captive lizard is not suitable for a bird. A gorilla is displeased by an environment that would be bliss for a snake.
Do not mistake me—it is better to hate your cage and search for something more than to be complacent. That we might find our cage a Heaven or a Hell is far more preferable to wanting nothing at all. Ants care not whose dirt they dwell in.
Hate your cage. Find another. Build it with your own bare hands if you must—but understand that it is a cage all the same. Embrace it. Fashion it with pride. Make it your home.
There is no such thing as freedom for our species.”
― Kathryn Ann Kingsley, The Puppeteer

“We live all our lives in cages. Each of us, be we a slave or be we a king, call a prison our home. The prison is that which gives us shelter. It is our society.”
― Kathryn Ann Kingsley, The Puppeteer

“Madness is an insidious disease.

We do not see the danger until it is too late. It creeps into the cracks and crevices of the mind and makes itself at home, like carpenter ants in the framing of a home. We do not know the floor has rotted away until one ill-timed step destroys the façade of normalcy.

But carpenter ants do not destroy a home. They change it. As matter cannot be destroyed, they consume the structures we have built and rearrange it for their own use.

While a home beset by such insects might seem uninhabitable for those who look at the situation from the outside, to the ants it was the intended outcome. We might inspect the foundation and find it derelict and dilapidated. We might scoff and say that anyone who lives within such a place is idiotic, and that they should have not neglected it in such a way. And, in extreme cases, they should move.

Consider this metaphor in relation to one’s mind. That place in which we spend the entirety of our mortal lives. What happens when your home is beset by insects then?

One cannot move out of one’s own mind, try as we might. We are trapped within these structures of ours, for better or worse and come what may. We must make do with what we are given and what we have left. Whereas you or I in our daily lives might seek a new homestead in such an infestation, in this labyrinth of the psyche, we cannot.

There are different ways that a consciousness, once gnawed and riddled with holes, might come to adapt to such a state of being. Consider three men with this dilemma, if you will.

The first man may seek to repair the damage—replace the eaten portions and shore up the foundations. This man is pragmatic, but shortsighted. He treats the symptoms, but not the cause.

The second may seek to exterminate the infestation—to seek the illness at the root and rip it out. This man is wise, but must need act quickly before the house collapses around him.

The third man merely laughs—he accepts his new state of being and does nothing to repair his home. He declares himself King of the Ants, lifts up hammer and sledge, and tears the remaining walls apart with his own two hands.

You might think that man the fool. You might think him a harmless, laughing lunatic.

It is a mistake that leads to ruin.

For that man is the most dangerous of them all.

-M. L. Harrow”
― Kathryn Ann Kingsley, The Puppeteer

“You’ve got a vile mind, Cora. I like it.”
― Kathryn Ann Kingsley, The Puppeteer

“It hadn’t been anyone else here in the boxcar with Cora. It had been himself. He’d been betrayed by his own shadow. He never did cease to disappoint himself.”
― Kathryn Ann Kingsley, The Puppeteer