Cassandra in Reverse Quotes

“Memories are time travel, and so are regrets, hopes and day-dreams.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Ideally, I'd be paid money to sit in a dimly lit room, reading and talking to nobody. Apart from maybe on the rare occasion where I'm wheeled out to talk at someone about something I'm interested in, and everybody is forced to listen but not allowed to respond.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I get caught up with trying to read all the music around me, instead of one note inside myself.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“There are infinite things you can do with time. You can save it, spend it, stitch it, kill it. You can beat it, steal it and watch it fly. You can do time and set it; you can waste it and keep it; it can be good or bad, on your side or against you. You can have a whale of it; be in the nick of it or behind it; you can have it on your hands.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I don’t think we talk enough, as a species, about how ridiculously difficult it is to make basic conversation. People act like it should be fun, but it isn’t. It’s like playing tennis, and you have to stay permanently perched on the balls of your feet just to work out where the ball is coming from and where it’s supposed to go next. Is it their turn? My turn? Will I get there fast enough? Have I missed my shot? Did I just interrupt theirs? Am I hogging the ball? Is this a gentle back-and-forth rally, just to waste time, or would they prefer one of us to just smack it into the corner?”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“And the complete truth of this statement shocks me, because I am mostly on my own. I am so permanently alone that I can feel it in my bones, in my eyeballs, in the roots of my hair. I feel loneliness like a physical presence, as if someone heavy is sitting on my chest. I feel it when I wake up and I feel it when I walk down the street. I feel it when I eat and when I dance; I feel it when I'm with people, and I feel it when I'm not. I feel loneliness inside me, all of the time, but I also like to be alone and I don't really like other humans much either, so where the hell does that leave me?”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Where does a story end? It's a lie. The last page of a book, because it masquerades as a conclusion...But life isn't like that, so books are dishonest. Maybe that's why humans like them.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“That’s the thing I’ve never really understood about emotions. We’re given unhelpful words for them—sad, happy, angry, scared, disgusted—but they’re not accurate and there never seems to be anywhere near enough of them. How could there be? Emotions aren’t binary or finite: they change, shift, run into each other like colored water. They are layered, three-dimensional and twisted; they don’t arrive in order, one by one, labeled neatly. They lie on top of each other, twisting like kaleidoscopes, like prisms, like spinning bird feathers lit with their own iridescence.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Maybe I'm not overthinking it. Maybe I've been told I'm overthinking it so often, by so many people, I've convinced myself it's all I'm capable of. But what if they're wrong? What if I'm thinking it exactly the right amount? What if everyone else is simply underthinking it, continuously, and the deficit is actually theirs? Because something tells me I'm not in the wrong here: my instincts are spot-on.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Time, as it grows old, teaches all things.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“For possibly the first time in three decades, I’m not weighed down by trying to read someone’s colors and their facial expression and their body language and their tone and their words and also look out for jokes and sarcasm and flirting and secret insults and what is implied and what is left unspoken and somehow simultaneously filter out the chatter around me and the milk frother and the sensation of the chair under my bum and the movement of my fingers and position of my own feet and the breeze on my face and the sound of the doorbell ringing and the sound of my own heart and breath and the muscles in my own face.

For just a few seconds of my life I get to just be present, and it is joyful.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I mean, we should probably have worked it out for ourselves, what with the lifelong obsession with Greek mythology and the rules and regulations and the need for quiet, dark rooms and the same restaurant and food over and over again and the sensory issues and the repetitive movements and the massive meltdowns, but we all just thought she was your bog-standard academic.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“But I find being around people so hard. Any people. There's all this noise and light and color and sensation, all the time, and I don't know how to read tone or emotions or jokes or sarcasm or flirting. It's like all the things that everyone else can do automatically, I have to do manually. And I get overwhelmed. Constantly. That's the face you're seeing. It's me, trying to process everything at once.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I do know what came over me. It's exactly what always comes over me when someone breaks rules, no matter how totally arbitrary they seem to be. Something in my brain snaps, and I detonate like a hand grenade. Which is incredibly hypocritical, given how happy I am to ignore rules if I don't personally agree with them.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“It’s a lie, the first page of a book, because it masquerades as a beginning. A real beginning-the opening of something-when what you’re being offered is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story starts here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever came before it or catch up later. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that a resolution isn’t simply another random moment on a curated timeline. But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest. Maybe that’s why humans like them.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Because if things can be broken, then things can be changed; and if things can be changed, then it stands to good and logical reason that they can also be fixed.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“But, of all the goddesses, I think Eos is the most powerful. Love is a courageous thing to pursue, and to me Eos represents hope, and resilience, and light in the darkest hour. She represents the strength to keep trying, even when you know you’re doomed. She represents new beginnings and refusing to accept defeat. She also represents the ability to change your husband into a cicada when he gets very old and kind of annoying. What could possibly be more inspiring than that?”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“The full truth is not easy or comfortable; it is often far safer to construct an alternative that keeps everyone happy instead.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I feel the color of being home.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“As if I’m constantly being asked to share, to reveal myself, to open up, and when I do—when I finally show people who I truly am—it’s not what anyone wanted and they explode right in front of me.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I do know what came over me. It’s exactly what always comes over me when someone breaks rules, no matter how totally arbitrary they seem to be. Something in my brain snaps, and I detonate like a hand grenade. Which is incredibly hypocritical, given how happy I am to ignore rules if I don’t personally agree with them.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“The Titan Eos has a really unfair reputation. Essentially the Bridget Jones of Greek mythology, the rosy-fingered bringer of dawn is known for two things: opening the gates every morning so her brother Helios can drive the sun across the sky, and being cursed by Aphrodite with a really shit love life for all eternity. So, while most of Olympus is indulging in endless torrid love affairs and pairing up like penguins, the immortal Titan Eos dates, and fails, and dates, and fails. She’s the original rom-com heroine: forever focused on finding love, wearing shades of pink, seen by all the other gods as a bit of a desperate loser. But, of all the goddesses, I think Eos is the most powerful. Love is a courageous thing to pursue, and to me Eos represents hope, and resilience, and light in the darkest hour. She represents the strength to keep trying, even when you know you’re doomed. She represents new beginnings and refusing to accept defeat. She also represents the ability to change your husband into a cicada when he gets very old and kind of annoying. What could possibly be more inspiring than that?”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“But I find being around people so hard. Any people. There’s all this noise and light and color and sensation, all the time, and I don’t know how to read tone or emotions or jokes or sarcasm or flirting. It’s like all the things that everyone else can do automatically, I have to do manually. And I get overwhelmed. Constantly.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“This book does not represent autism, and neither I nor Cassie represent autistic people. We are simply individual voices in a choir of millions of amazing neurodivergent people, all with our own experiences, or own ways of seeing the world, our own ways of existing. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, and I would not want to try. So, whether you enjoyed this book or not, whether you see yourself represented in this story or not, I urge you to seek out other autistic voices.
We are beautiful, we are unique, and we are legion.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“She hates meeting new people. I should have done it a little bit at a time, like introducing a recently acquired kitten.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I should be more surprised. I should be reeling. But isn't this exactly how I've always felt? That I'm not quite made the same? That I'm some kind of alien, trying to learn how to be a human from scratch every day? That I constantly need to translate the world around me to myself, and then myself back to the world again, like speaking two completely different languages simultaneously?
Wow. No wonder I'm always so bloody exhausted.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I'm on the spectrum," I say with a jolt. "Derek and Jack were right."
"They were not." Artemis scowls. "That's a euphemism. They don't want to say autistic because they think it's rude. It is not rude."
"It's not?" I say distantly, observing my brain shift again.
"Nope. People think autism is some kind of error, and it's not. You're not broken or 'disordered,' or whatever they say on their little bits of paper. That just means 'not exactly like me.' Which--" Artemis points at the folder "--I think you'll see is one of the many things Mum wrote in the margins, along with the words go to hell, highlighted in pink. Autism is just a different wiring. You're built in alternative neurological software, from the ground up. Every single part of you. And it's..."
"Colorful and loud?" I guess, and Artemis laughs.
"I was going to say brilliant," she says. "But, yeah, I'd imagine that too. Although I don't know why anyone is surprised at how the world treats you. This has never really been a planet that embraces difference.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Because I am not a monster or a goddess; I am not a prophet or a princess, a gorgon or a priestess. I am not Aphrodite or Athena, Arachne or Medusa. I did not emerge from a seashell, or the inside of a head; I do not have to weave my story, over and over again, and it is not--and never should be--told by other people.

My fate is not written in time, or sand, or stars, or in a tapestry, or a spider's web, and it never actually was.

I am Cassandra: the future was always in me.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I realize that's how it sometimes feels to be me.
As if I have to hide who I am, all of the time.
As if I have to pretend to be like everyone else, just so people will love me.
As if I'm constantly being asked to share, to reveal myself, to open up, and when I do--when I finally show people who I truly am--it's not what anyone wanted and they explode right in front of me.
I am so fucking done with making myself smaller.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I've actually done it. I've made a change. Altered my own path. Time travel aside, I've been stuck in a loop of my own making for a very long time now, just going round and round.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse