Maeve Fly Quotes

“Men have always been permitted in fiction and in life to simply be what they are, no matter how dark or terrifying that might be. But with a woman, we expect an answer, a reason.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“I have never understood, and still do not understand the notion that a woman must first endure a victimhood of some sort—abandonment, abuse, oppression of the patriarchy—to be monstrous. Men have always been permitted in fiction and in life to simply be what they are, no matter how dark or terrifying that might be. But with a woman, we expect an answer, a reason. But why would she do it? Why, why, why?”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“He howls questions to me: Who are you? Why are you doing this? I didn’t do anything to anyone. I don’t deserve this. Why me? This is a failing of men. This same violence, applied to a woman, she does not ask why it is being inflicted upon her, she only struggles unsuccessfully to free herself and grieves the fact she has grieved her entire life, one that she understands fundamentally and innately. That violence simply occurs.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“I have tried the way of the misanthrope, the way of the deviant, the philosopher, the observer, the pretender. But there is one road I have not seriously considered walking down, have not permitted myself to. Perhaps it is time.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“I love Halloween because all the time, everyone wears masks. But one night a year, they do it openly. The dark and forbidden things they wish to be but deny themselves, on Halloween they don’t. On Halloween, they embrace it, all of it. The hidden parts of the world are exposed, if only for one night. And those things that are truly dark are a little less alone.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“Here is the truth, the one that so few of us know:
You do not need a moral and noble story to do what you want.
You do not first need to be a victim to become a monster.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“A lifetime thus far of being alone. Of knowing I would be alone, forever. To stand in a full room and know oneself to be apart, that invisible barrier between you and them to be in every way uncrossable. To find the will to exist in a world so wholly unsuited for you.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“There are no spoilers in life. If you are observant and pragmatic, the endings of all things are easily predictable. In the most basic terms, human life is always punctuated with death. It does not cheapen the buildup to know it. There are many winding paths to an inevitable end, and there is so much beauty and pain in the watching.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“There are many definitions of insanity in this world. One could argue that spooning a man’s eyeball out of the socket and performing carnal acts of religious desecration with it is insanity - we will revisit that later- perhaps you’d be right, but I argue that true insanity is driving in Los Angeles.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve

“Inside my room, I turn on Billy Holiday. There are only two kinds of music in my world. Billy Holiday and Halloween songs.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“The core of the story was there. People so often get hung up on the facts, on plausibility or details. But every day in this life, we’re all only telling each other, and ourselves, stories. We may as well make them good.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“I have never understood, and still do not understand the notion that a woman must first endure a victimhood of some sort—abandonment, abuse, oppression of the patriarchy—to be monstrous.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“It’s only the kind of fucked-up girls who like my princess, the sister with the destructive powers, the one without a husband. The one who occupies the space of both princess and villainess.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“The wolf is strong. But there is one who is stronger. You will have to feed it, every day, forever. You will have to nurture it, Maeve, for the wolf can never be seen again. Not by me, and not by anyone. You cannot be what you are and survive.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“It was the grime and the shine together.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“You do not need a moral and noble story to do what you want. You do not first need to be a victim to become a monster. Your loved ones need not be taken from you so that you might drink and brutalize and chase the sublime. Life is fleeting and meaningless and crying to be seized from behind and fucked into obscurity.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“In the most basic terms, human life is always punctuated with death.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“There are no spoilers in life. There is only just the one ending.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“There are many definitions of insanity in this world. One could argue that spooning a man’s eyeball out of the socket and performing carnal acts of religious desecration with it is insanity—we will revisit this later—and perhaps you’d be right, but I would argue that true insanity is far simpler than that.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“At first I was drawn to illicit, banned, or subversive books because they were just that. But after a time, and especially since my grandmother’s illness set in, I’ve been using them as sort of instructional guides. How to Exist, as told by misanthropes throughout the ages.”
― CJ Leede, Maeve Fly

“And because we're being honest, because we're girl besties, I guess the truth is really this. You took something I love from me, but... I really might have just done all this anyway.”
― CJ leede, Maeve

“I have never understood”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“There are no spoilers in life. If you are observant and pragmatic”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“Finger confetti for everyone!”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“Life and all its choices and lack of choices propelling us forward, holding us still. I want to lie in the dark here forever, suspended and out of time. I want to stop wanting for so much I cannot have. For things to stop moving forward and spinning away from me with such violent indifference.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“I have the insipid sense that if I remain very still and keep my mind free of thought, then everything will be alright. If I do not think the worst, the worst cannot happen.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“Also, just on an etymological level, everything humans touch is culture. Towns in bumfuck nowhere with populations under a hundred people have culture. Human life is human culture, and people who feel that the existence of one type is of greater value than another frankly seem to be the most uncultured of all.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“The failing body works in every way to remind us that we are nothing more than a series of fired impulses, a machine of biological compulsion that really has very little use after reproduction.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“If there is any such thing as a sign, if there is anything compassionate in the brutality that is being alive...

I reach forward and brush my fingers against the spine. A book I had not considered before, not in any real seriousness, as an instructional. A way of life that is not quiet or secret or tucked away. How silly of me. How silly of us, to think we must do in shadow what men do in the light. What they have always done. How blind I have been.”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly

“read once that sharks are thought to be an example of evolutionary perfection. They have been honed over four hundred and fifty million years into simple, efficient, optimum predators. They may not outsmart some mammals, but who needs intelligence when one is”
― C.J. Leede, Maeve Fly