What Lies in the Woods Quotes

“Sometimes it seemed like the only thing I’d ever been good at was surviving being broken. I didn’t know how to be whole. So any time I felt like I was healing, I found a way to break myself again.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“There is a wilderness in little girls. We could not contain it. It made magic of the rain and a temple of the forest.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it?” Ethan said. “You gather all the evidence you can, use your brain, weigh character and past actions. But the final inch of it—that’s faith. Trust means believing in someone. It’s not just a conclusion. It’s a choice.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“If they'd known the truth about Persephone, they would have thought we were strange, wicked little beasts — and we were. What little girl isn't?”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“There is a wilderness in little girls. We could not contain it. It made magic of the rain and a temple of the forest. We raced down narrow trails, hair flying wind-wild behind us, and pretended that the slender spruce and hemlock were still the ancient woods that industry had chewed down to splinters. We made ourselves into warriors, into queens, into goddesses.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“The flesh does not acknowledge linear time, a therapist had once told me. The past is written alongside the present on our skins.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“They thought she was bossy, a term that mysteriously only ever seem to be applied to girls.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Nothing good comes from digging up old trouble.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“They told the story again and again, until they thought they owned it. We tried to forget. We didn’t tell the story. Not the real one. Not ever.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it?… You gather all the evidence you can, use your brain, weigh character and past actions. But the final inch of it – that’s faith. Trust means believing in someone. It’s not just a conclusion. It’s a choice.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“We knew the world was cruel and dirty and dull, and it was all so brutally unfair that we refused to accept it. There was magic in the world. We only had to find it.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Of course I believe,” I whispered to the dark, but there was no one to answer.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“pain balanced by pain.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“He smelled like soap and responsible choices.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Why did people always say it that way? The other murders. They weren’t the other murders, because I hadn’t been murdered. They were just “the murders.” It made me wonder if I’d died and no one had had the heart to tell me.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Beneath a canopy of moss-wreathed branches, we joined hands and pledged ourselves to one another forever - a kind of forever that burns only in the hearts of those young enough not to know better.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“We tried to forget. We didn’t tell the story. Not the real one. Not ever.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“You couldn’t let someone in without it breaking you, but you could choose the way you broke.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Once that fear was in your body, that knowledge that someone wanted you dead, it never entirely left.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“I’d known from the start that he’d sought me out because my sad story was written on my face and he was hoping to borrow it.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Sometimes, surrender was the kindest thing of all.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“I’d understood it, though—that urge to fight, not just because you wanted to hurt something but because you wanted to be hurt. It had never gone away. I’d just found less visible ways to wear my bruises.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“For all the wild girls who search for magic in the woods”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“When I was eleven years old, I believed in magic.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“I might have been the one who discovered Persephone, but Cassidy was the one who made her ours.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“I wished I knew how to explain that it wasn’t a secret we kept from her—not really. It was only that Cass was someone who needed to fix things—and sometimes Liv and I, we just needed to be broken together.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“She’d said raising kids was a bit like that. You had to harden them, before they were ready to go out safely into the world. If you put them out too soon, all at once,”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“There is a wilderness in little girls. We could not contain it. It made magic of the rain and a temple of the forest. We raced down narrow trails, hair flying wind-wild behind us, and pretended that the slender spruce and hemlock were still the ancient woods that industry had chewed down to splinters. We made ourselves into warriors, into queens, into goddesses. Fern leaves and dandelions became poultices and potions, and we sang incantations to the trees. We gave ourselves new names: Artemis, Athena, Hecate. Conversations were in code, our letters filled with elaborate ciphers, and we taught ourselves the meanings of stones.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“But he changed his name when he turned eighteen. Before that, it was—” I stared at the page inside the folder. It was paperwork for having his name changed in the state of Washington to Ethan Schreiber— From Alan Michael Stahl, Jr.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Unless I wasn’t a target,” I said. “I was a witness. He wasn’t there for me at all.” “He was there to visit a body,” Ethan said. Not just a body. Persephone.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods