I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself Quotes

“In this world, you learn to hold the good days and bad days together in your lungs, and you don’t dare breathe out, for fear that in releasing the bad days, you’ll also lose the good ones. On the walk home, I think, this has been a good day.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“If I had to choose, I would say the moment between when you decided to kiss me and when we actually kissed, that is where I wish to live forever. Inside my anticipation, dying to receive you.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Every boring slice of domesticity, the grocery shopping, the endless errands and chores, the accusations—Did you move my . . .?—these moments made up our life, and I’d wished them gone. I hadn’t understood the tenderness of climbing into bed with you after a stretched-thin day. Of pulling the comforter down and sliding in beside you. Of falling into a dream before we could properly kiss goodnight, but knowing the kiss was still there, hovering between us.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I never feel like I know how to live in the world. Only on top of it, hanging on as it spins madly.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I know I am growing obsessive, but I don’t know any other way to grow.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I've never been afraid of anything more than I've been afraid of my own happiness. But I want it, oh I want it. Something tells me it isn't happiness without fear.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I’ve heard it said that love is choosing to listen to how someone’s day went at least thirty thousand times. Love is saying, I am here, I am paying attention, and I care about that fight you had with your coworker. Beau, sometimes listening to you scream Fuck today, let’s go on a date was the only thing keeping me alive.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“We is the most tender word I know.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“The first stage of grief, I realize, isn’t denial—it’s clinging.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Have you ever considered taking a red pen to your life?”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Oh, to be in love and want to practice polyamory with a ghost.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I didn't want to reckon with what it meant to be traumatized in a world that would not hold me.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Remembering is a courageous act.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“My head feels the way watercolor looks when it bleeds.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Maybe we wanted another person to join us while we watched the world burn.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“My parents must have sensed my queerness, possibly as young as three, but instead of sitting me down and saying, We love you, we love you. Here’s what you need to know about the people who won’t, my father ignored me, and my mother redirected me toward princess crowns and pink frilly dresses.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I know that I’ve spent my entire life convinced I wasn’t real unless I was loving someone with everything I had.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“What I mean is, it never once occurred to me that you, too, were mortal.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I worry I will lose it all at any moment, but I keep my exoskeletons to myself.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“We’ve done the research. The shadows are an evidence-based practice. People behave better when they are reminded of their mistakes, said the president, as he was making a very big mistake.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Years before I met you, a friend introduced me to kink. She showed me shibari models online, and I thought I would very much like to feel the sharp of my teeth against their flesh. I wanted someone both to tie up and to tie me up. Then I met a woman who was a live-in sub for a dom couple. Her name was Lily—she was a switch. Every fall, she went to a leather and kink festival. I don’t know what I’m doing, I said. It’s okay, I’ll show you, she said. We hung the set of rules in her bedroom and recited them into each other’s mouths. It was a beautiful initiation. Every time we went out to the bar, her goal was to make me jealous with other women; my goal was to hide my jealousy, to avoid interfering with her flirtations. If I pulled her away from a conversation, to kiss her, to bite her, to mark my territory, I would be punished later, which I frequently was. I lived for the sting of the flogger, the rip from and return to my body. I felt good as long as I knew what was expected of me. Within the realm of kink, I felt unstoppable and invincible, like a teenager drag racing on an icy road. Outside of it, though, responsibility felt wrong, heavy—something I couldn’t wait to dispose”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I can’t help but think that if this is isolation, then it is beautiful.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Like catharsis in reverse, I feel like I am finally gathering all the emotions I’ve dropped since your death. And it feels nice.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Tomorrow, I decide, will be better. Tomorrow, I will recover from today.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“We is the longest word I know.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I would say the moment between when you decided to kiss me and when we actually kissed, that is where I wish to live forever. Inside my anticipation, dying to receive you.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“Here I was thinking my tears might move her enough to forgive me for not turning my body into a home.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“I've never been afraid of anything more than I've been afraid of my own happiness. But I want it, oh I want it. Something tells me it isn't happiness without fear. This small fact keeps me breathing and sleeping.”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“This is how waves work: they build like a cry, then crash,”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

“As I got older and gayer, I heard a lot of talk about chosen family, but I didn’t understand why something so beautiful had to be compared to family. Why couldn’t it just be its own good thing?”
― Marisa Crane, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself