Threshold Quotes

“Time is your cathedral. You know the present is only a pretty illusion in the minds of men. And I think you know that nothing has ever passed away, not entirely.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“And all the shelves rising up around her like book-lined walls of a fortress, safe in here, always safe in here from the world, guarded by books and all the secrets inside them, all the things hardly anyone else will ever care to learn.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“Some stories don't have endings," she says. "In some stories, there aren't even answers.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“There are new smells on the wind, the healthy scent of green and growing things, the way a summer day can smell, or a greenhouse, sugarsmooth aroma of budding trees and water flowing free across coarse and sparkling sand.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“No sound here but the river lapping hungry at the edge of the forest, the sigh of the wind in the leaves and the rasping drone of insects.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“Dancy can hear rain beginning to fall on the tar-paper roof of the cabin. Fat summer raindrops, and it’s the sweetest sound, almost, sweet as the end of a fever, as ripe as red apples.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“Making a story from the messy thoughts and half-thoughts in her head, building a world and lives and taking them apart again, fitting the pieces together another way until it feels right, as right as she can make it feel.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“I think I might have something for you today," he says, reaches beneath the counter, and his hand comes back with a book, clothbound cover the color of antique ivory, title and author stamped in faded gold and art deco letters. Best Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood, and she lifts it carefully off the countertop, picks it up the way someone else might lift a diamond necklace or a sick kitten, and opens the book to the frontispiece and title page, black-and-white photo of the author in a dapper suit, sadkind eyes and his bow tie just a little crooked.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“…but that was a long time ago, a long story everyone’s tired of repeating, or a short story simply not worth repeating again.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“You think one's any different from the next? I mean, when it comes right down to brass tacks, people killing each other since they figured out how, that's all. Give them pretty names and numbers, but it's all the same to the worms.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“Yeah, that’s what I saw. But I learned a long time ago that some stuff I see when I touch these things, some of it can be influence by other people who touched them before me, by what those people believed. If those beliefs are strong enough, Chance, it’s like they can leave impressions behind, the same way that actual events can.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“Chance smiled back at him, and “Well, can you think of anything else I could do with my life that could ever possibly be half this splendid, half this important? I’m learning to read, Deke, and not just the handful of things men have been around long enough to write down. The history of the whole damned planet is written in rocks, just lying there waiting for us to learn how to read it.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“The long nub end of afternoon spent at her keyboard, her hands moving so much slower than her racing mind, The frustrating lag between her thoughts and the hunt and peck; a hot flood of ideas where there had been months of trickling, uncertain sentences, and Sadie trying to keep up with herself, wishing she'd taken typing in high school, scared that this inspiration would grow restless, impatient with her, and slink back to whatever hole it crawled out of.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“Chance takes a deep breath, fills her lungs with all the brightness getting in through the window, filling herself with that sane and ordinary air, with what she knows is real, reality to make her brave.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“Back home, the dank and mildewstinking halls of Quinlan Castle, and she pauses on the concrete front steps to shake the rain off Jerome's happy yellow umbrella, flaps it open and closed, open and closed, making a furious noise like the death throes of a giant bat or a pterodactyl, spraying a thousand droplets across the steps and the sidewalk.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“That would be showing him a part of her soul, a part of her mind, that she's never risked showing anyone. The raw and squirming part that indifferent high-school counselor were always prying at, the part therapists tried to trick her into showing them for free, the part her parents hated her for. The light and the darkness behind her eyes. The soft places.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“I loved this place when I was a kid. I still love it, but when I was a kid I'd take the bus down here and spend all day long reading in this room.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold

“Stop it," Chance says out loud, angryraw, scornful voice that she hardly recognizes, "Jesus, just fucking stop it," but she's crying again, and her eyes burn, and she's so goddamn sick of the sound, the smell and saltbland flavor of her own useless tears.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, Threshold