Comfort Me with Apples Quotes

“Why…” Sophia raises her eyes to the ceiling, searching for a divinity that is not there, not for her. Her eyes fill up with hopelessness. She asks a question older than day and night. “Why doesn’t He love me like He loves you?” Tears fall down her perfect face. “Why does He let you do this? Why won’t He tell you to stop?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“Is she happy? She doesn’t understand. She has never considered it. It is possible to be so entirely happy you never ask the question. She is a full glass submerged in water. Neither nor both full and empty. The inquiry, though kind, has no meaning for her.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“But it feels so good to be held, it feels so good to be spoken to like she is capable and wise, to hear her life gain weight, fed by Cascavel. Fed by being seen.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“Be a good neighbor and you will have good neighbors”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“...Sophia fully and truly thinks she will die. The sound of it is a knife, if a knife could kiss, and the kiss could turn the color of morning...

... Yet it contains a perfection that is twin to pain.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me with Apples

“You have to want the truth, or it will mean nothing to you.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“I saw what that man did to you and all the rest of them and I have wept in earnest for every gorgeous loving girl that house has eaten whole.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“The sound of it is a knife, if a knife could kiss, and the kiss could turn the color of morning.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“How quickly the blue-green of twilight brings wildness to the mind.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“Cascavel pulls her to him again, and Sophia is so deep in the dark she wants him to do it, to hold her and make her safe and kiss her again because he is not her husband and she knows, the way she knows the sun and the moon, that her husband is going to hurt her somehow, and soon. So anyone else is better.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“You all find your way here in the end. To this green place. To this tree and to me. I always offer you the truth. The simplest and deepest of temptations. And I hope against hope you will say no. Say no, Sophia. Say no and run, past the gardens and the pools and the silent streetlamps, out of the gate and into the far hot sands that stretch on beyond the length of the sky. Into the world. Without him. Without guilt. But you won’t. You never do. Except her. And whatever they ever say about her, Sophia, she lived. So, she won.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“you were made without the ability to be dissatisfied, Sophia. After the last disaster, it seemed a prudent move. And we care about you. Everyone here cares more about what happens to you than you can possibly imagine. So they ask, because as long as the answer is yes, you are safe. But the answer is not yes anymore, is it, poor poppet?” “But I have to be happy. Everything here is perfect.” Sophia swallows what feels like a ball of knives in her throat. She knows the truth. She just has to say it. “Except me.” “Don’t even think it, Sophie, my girl! Except him.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“Are you happy, Sophia?” “NO,” she screams in his face, and there is so much relief in that one syllable that she almost faints clear away.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“You cannot tell anyone, it whispers. Not any of them. They all know. They all must know. They would have met the woman your house was built for. And they never told you. You have no friends.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“and that’s how she knows it all really did happen, she is alive and she is Sophia, alive and warm and real and in gross violation of her HOA contract.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“She collapses where her lungs command. She has no single thought except to, hopefully, annihilate her pain in sleep and never wake.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“His expression is unreadable, faraway. He doesn’t even look at Sophia. She can’t stand it. The loss of his regard. Please look at me again, she thinks, I’ll die if you don’t, I will. But it does no good.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“You are happy, aren’t you? Aren’t you?” “Yes, my darling,” Sophia sighs, and she is not lying. Not yet. The mingling of their breath is a biome in which only the truth can thrive. “Yes.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“Her husband does not move like that. He thuds when he walks. He thuds when he sits. He thuds when he eats and when he drinks and even when he sleeps. Sophia likes his thudding, she always has. When he thuds, the world listens and gets out of his way. That is her whole understanding of men.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“Nothing was ever the same again after. Surprises did that to you. Nasty things. Lying in wait. A surprise, even a little one, means a change in the world, and Sophia likes her world as it is. She likes it so much.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“As far as that man can see, you’re the only woman in the world.” “As far as anyone can see. I’ve caught Mr. Lyon stealing a glance or three, I don’t mind telling you.” Mrs. Lyon rolls her eyes and tosses her thick, dark golden hair gaily. “Oh, nonsense!” Sophia cries out, her face burning red. “It’s true! Oh, pish-posh, it’s no shadow on my grass. He wouldn’t dare. I’d eat his head!”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“The party is alive, that's what matters.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me with Apples

“You are happy, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

“Yes, my darling,” Sophia sighs, and she is not lying. Not yet.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me with Apples

“I see,” Cascavel says with real comfort in the margins of his voice. “I see.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me with Apples

“You’re so perfectly lovely and perfectly good and perfectly sweet as a perfect orange.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me with Apples

“Why doesn’t He love me like He loves you?” Tears fall down her perfect face. “Why does He let you do this? Why won’t He tell you to stop?”
Adam picks awkwardly at the piecrust. “I was made in His image,” the primordial man says softly. Then he giggles. “You were made from my eye!”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me with Apples

“alive and warm and real and in gross violation of her HOA contract.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me With Apples

“12. Suffering of any kind is and shall be considered - contraband.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Comfort Me with Apples