Quotes from A List of Cages

Robin Roe ·  310 pages

Rating: (9.6K votes)


“Hate ricochets, but kindness does too.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“Why is time like that? Why does it slow down in the places you don’t want it to, but it speeds away when you’re happy?”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“Because people heal a whole lot faster when they're with someone who loves them”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“Getting smacked in the face with a Harry Potter book does not qualify as a fight," Charlie says.
"First of all, it wasn't just any Harry Potter book. It was Order of the Phoenix."
Matt gasps. He knows that Order of the Phoenix is the longest and most potentially dangerous of all the Harry Potter books when used as a weapon.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages



“If I really had powers, I could turn off pain the way I can shut my eyes. But I can’t. I feel it. Skin doesn’t get thicker. Instead, it remembers.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“when you’re between two shores and no one can see you, you don’t really exist at all.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“And when you smile…my grandmother calls them big-soul smiles. She says some people have souls so big that they spread out, touching everyone they pass.” Emerald wipes her wet face again. “There are different ways to help people, Adam. There are different ways to do good.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“I know what I think, but people don't want you to say what you think. They want you to say what they think. And knowing what that is isn't easy.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered.... When you know you're going to tell someone everything, you see your day through your eyes and theirs, as if they're living it alongside you. But when you don't, it isn't only not seeing double--it's not seeing at all. Because if they aren't there, you aren't either.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages



“I used to think struggle was what aged you, but if that were the case, Julian should have been a hundred years old. Now I wonder if the opposite is true. Maybe instead of accelerating your age, pain won't let you grow.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“It's strange how many ways there are to miss someone. You miss the things they did and who they were, but you also miss who you were to them. The way everything you said and did was beautiful or entertaining or important. How much you mattered.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“She said no one is evil, only unhappy, and unhappiness festers inside like sores.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“I'm dizzy. I'm here. I'm alive.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“When you know you’re going to tell someone everything, you see your day through your eyes and theirs, as if they’re living it alongside you. But when you don’t, it isn’t only not seeing double—it’s not seeing at all. Because if they aren’t there, you aren’t either.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages



“Their eyes like safety nets, I can’t fall.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“You don’t really know people when your back is turned.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“There was nowhere to go that me and the pain didn’t follow.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“This part is hardest. A billion years of evolution tells your cells to run. But you can’t run. You have to turn around and face the desert wall.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“Monday is like all Mondays. Like I’m sitting at the bottom of a pool, listening underwater to people living up above.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages



“And when you smile…my grandmother calls them big-soul smiles. She says some people have souls so big that they spread out, touching everyone they pass.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“I want my body to be mine again.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“Next time you have to hand something in, just tell me. I can proofread it or whatever." I nod, but I know I won't. If he's being nice enough to offer, I should be nice enough to never do it.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“What keeps you trapped?...What keeps you from living the life you want? What keeps you from being free?”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“But wanting isn't the same as having.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages



“Because when you’re between two shores and no one can see you, you don’t really exist at all.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“My mother once said that the planet was like an enormous womb, and every single one of us was a fetus. Death was nothing to be afraid of. It was just birth to another world, and someone would be waiting for us there. Sometimes I try to see this, my mother and father as two newborns holding hands and ejected into this other world. There they are just beginning.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“But whenever I would imagine leaving, I’d see the blue sky like the ocean—no walls or shore or end in sight. And I’d see myself disappear.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“I should be afraid, but I feel empty. I remember my father’s hands. My mother’s hands. What hands are meant to do.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages


“When someone says something, they automatically know what to say back. But for me it's as if the pathway between my brain and mouth is damaged, like a rare form of paralysis.”
― Robin Roe, quote from A List of Cages



About the author

Popular quotes

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“study of thirty thousand elderly people in fifty-two countries found that switching to an overall healthy lifestyle—eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, not smoking, exercising moderately, and not drinking too much alcohol—lowered heart disease rates by approximately 50 percent.14 Reducing exposure to carcinogens, such as tobacco and sodium nitrite, have been shown to decrease the incidence of lung and stomach cancers, and it is likely (more evidence is needed) that lowering exposures to other known carcinogens, such as benzene and formaldehyde, will reduce the incidence of other cancers. Prevention really is the most powerful medicine, but we as a species consistently lack the political or psychological will to act preventively in our own best interests. It is worthwhile to ask to what extent efforts to treat the symptoms of common mismatch diseases have the effect of promoting dysevolution by taking attention and resources away from prevention. On an individual level, am I more likely to eat unhealthy foods and exercise insufficiently if I know I’ll have access to medical care to treat the symptoms of the diseases these choices cause many years later? More broadly within our society, is the money we allocate to treating diseases coming at the expense of money to prevent them?”
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