Spelunking Through Hell Quotes

“It’s just that home is rarely a place. It’s a combination of conditions.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“Trauma changes who you are, and there’s no way to say ‘well, I’m finished with this, I’m going to move on now.’ You have to figure out how to reconcile it with everything else you understand about yourself, and sometimes it really sucks.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“Your partner shouldn’t complete you. Everyone is an entire person all on their own, and you don’t need someone else to make you whole. But sometimes you know what the world is supposed to be so absolutely that when it changes without your consent, the absence of the people you’ve chosen as your own can be a gaping wound.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“It wasn’t going to stop me from injuring them, but no one ever said I was into proportionate response.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“My body and I aren’t always friends,”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“Maybe this was proof that I was on the right track. You can spend a long, long time in maybe. You can put down roots there.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“According to Mary, pain leaves marks on the nervous system, and enough pain, over enough time, can scar.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“It’s always easier to set yourself on fire than to allow someone else to burn for you.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“There’s a lot of talk about how humans are inherently aggressive and will always devolve into conflict, but at the end of the day, we’re the cosmic equivalent of puppies. We trip over our own feet and try to make friends with everything we meet.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“My son-in-law, Martin, is a Revenant,”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“Hope makes you worry about how much you’re bleeding. Fatalism makes you do more damage before you die.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“People put down roots, becoming as much a part of the land as the trees and lakes and swamp around them, and began, in their own quiet way, to grow.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“Consent has to be remembered to exist.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“She might not be wearing her trauma as obviously as some of the others, but she was still wearing it.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“Pickiness is a product of plenty, after all.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“If my choice was a perfect lie or continuing to run long after my quest turned hopeless, I’d take the lie. Maybe that makes me weak, but I honestly don’t care.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“By the time he rolled away from me, panting and staring at the ceiling, I was no longer a stranger in that once-familiar country; I was back where I belonged. We both were.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“I say, “relatively easy,” which means it wasn’t impossible, the way it should have been for someone as magically inert as I was.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“No. I was never ready. That didn’t mean it wasn’t necessary, or that I didn’t understand the reasons;”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“No one ever really dies. We live on in the memories of our children, and it’s down to us to make sure that we’re remembered kindly.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“I hated him. He was my father, and I loved him, and I hated him.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“like something this big and complicated and messy would ever be that straightforward when it didn’t have to be.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“That’s sometimes the only thing I miss about having long hair; poisoned hairpins really are a miracle that more people should pray for.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“For someone most people consider an unstable loner, I sure do wind up with a lot of obligations, and I don’t like any of them.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“I’ve been falling out of trees, breaking bones, and trying to shake off blood loss almost since I was old enough to walk, and when you learn to treat all injuries as a mild inconvenience, you can handle almost anything.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“There’s something in the quality of the air that tells you when you’re alone.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“My clergy splintered after you disappeared,” I said. “There are two completely different faiths now. I suppose they’ll have to reunify after this. That should be fun to watch.” Sally snorted, and apparently dismissing talking mice as only the fifth most impossible thing she’d seen this week, turned to digging through the fridge.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“One of the lizards swatted me to the side as they ran, not taking the time to finish me off, which I appreciated. I don’t like being finished off.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“Meaning they have a rotting universe latched onto their own, poisoning it by inches.” “Yes. Not much to eat there if you take each other off the menu, and they don’t seem too inclined to do that.” “Right.” Thomas shook his head, eyes hard. “I don’t want to know why you had to know that. I feel that the story of your life while we’ve been apart is going to drive me to drink.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld

“I still couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even nod anymore. Everything was crashing down on top of me, walls eroded by relief and finally feeling like I could relax. How much damage had I done to myself in the process of running? How much of it could have been avoided? “Oh, Alice . . .” Thomas put his arm around me, drawing me up against his body. “If I wasn’t already convinced, this would convince me.”
― Seanan McGuire, Spelunking Through Hell: A Visitor's Guide to the Underworld