Quotes from Eliza and Her Monsters

Francesca Zappia ·  385 pages

Rating: (18.5K votes)


“You found me in a constellation.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“There is a small monster in my brain that controls my doubt.
The doubt itself is a stupid thing, without sense or feeling, blind and straining at the end of a long chain. The monster though, is smart. It's always watching, and when I am cmpletely sure of myself, it unchains the doubt and lets it run wild. even when I know it's coming, I can't stop it.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“Broken people don't hide from their monsters. Broken people let themselves be eaten.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“There are monsters in the sea.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“I'm so tired. I'm tired of anxiety that twists my stomach so hard I can't move the rest of my body. Tired of constant vigilance. Tired of wanting to do something about myself, but always taking easy way out.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters



“Maybe that’s normal. The things you care most about are the ones that leave the biggest holes.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“Like life, what gives a story its meaning is the fact that it ends. Our stories have lives of their own—and its up to us to make them mean something.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“I'm not normally one to take advice from my fictional characters, but there comes a point in every girl's life where she reaches a crossroads: a night alone with her sweatpants and her favorite television show, or a party with real, live, breathing people.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“Disappearing is an art form, and I am its queen.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“She drew so many monsters that she became a monster herself.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters



“I learned years ago that it’s okay to do this. To seek out small spaces for me, to stop and imagine myself alone. People are too much sometimes. Friends, acquaintances, enemies, strangers. It doesn’t matter; they all crowd. Even if they’re all the way across the room, they crowd. I take a moment of silence and think:
I am here. I am okay.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“I made Monstrous Sea because it's the story I wanted. I wanted a story like it, and I couldn't find one, so I created it myself.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“How can I want something so badly but become so paralyzed every time I think about taking it?”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“If you want the motivation back, you must feed it Feed it everything. Books, television, movies, paintings, stage plays, real-life experience. Sometimes feeding simply means working, working through nonmotivation, working even when you hate it.
We create art for many reasons - wealth, fame, love, admiration - but I find the one thing that produces the best results is desire. When you want the thing you're creating, the beauty of it will shine through, even if the details aren't all in order. Desire is the fuel of creators, and when we have that, motivation will come in its wake.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“I don't want to be the girl who freezes when confronted with new friends, or the outside world, or the smallest shred of intimacy. I don't want to be alone in a room all the time. I don't want to feel alone in a room all the time, even when there are other people around.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters



“I do have friends. Maybe they live hundreds of miles away from me, and maybe I can only talk to them through a screen, but they're still my friends. They don't just hold Monstrous Sea together. They hold me together.
Max and Emmy are the reason any of this exists.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“Truth is the worst monster, because it never really goes away.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“Creating art is a lonely task, which is why we introverts revel in it, but when we have fans looming over us, it becomes loneliness of a different sort. We become cage animals watched by zoo-goers, expected to perform lest the crowd grow bored or angry. It's not always bad. Sometimes we do well, and the cage feels more like a pedestal”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“Monstrous Sea is mine.
I made it, not the other way around.
It's not a parasite, or an obligation, or a destiny.
It's a monster.
It's mine.
And I have a battle axe waiting for it.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


MirkerLurker: I thought the characters were the reason anyone read Monstrous Sea.

rainmaker: You mean like, shipping?

MirkerLurker: No, not shipping - shipping's great, and I do it all the time, but I mean... the characters themselves. The struggles they have to go through, and when you really love them, how much they affect you. When the characters are good, they make you care about everything else. That's why I draw them. It probably sounds dumb, but they're like real people to me. And this will probably sound worse, but sometimes I like them better than real people. I can empathize with characters. Real people are harder.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters



“Real people don’t have concise character arcs.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“Wallace: What's the point of being alive if you don't do what makes you happy? What good is a career that makes you money if you hate yourself every day you do it?”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“„Wallace.”
He looks up.
„I want to be happy,” I say.
„Me too,” he says.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“Made you breakfast. Are you feeling okay? You look a little gray.” I grunt. Morning is the devil’s time.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“Nature doesn’t care if we feel so heavy we might sink into the ground and never be able to pull ourselves out again.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters



“My body gets excited without my permission, and it's not okay. It's out of control. I don't like out of control, but I like Wallace.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“That's what I like about the internet-that it gives you time to think about what you want to say before you say it.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“That computer is my rabbit hole; the internet is my wonderland. I am only allowed to fall into it when it doesn’t matter if I get lost.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“The things you care most about are the ones that leave the biggest holes.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters


“If I like a book, I devour it in one sitting, and then I forget a lot. It's fine with me, because I read them over and over again.”
― Francesca Zappia, quote from Eliza and Her Monsters



About the author

Francesca Zappia
Born place: in The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Gary Mark Gilmore: Go down on me, partner... I need it

Nicole Baker: Don't call me partner.

Gary Mark Gilmore: No, darlin'... I love it... I love it

Nicole Baker: Yeah, you and seven other motherfuckers.”
― Norman Mailer, quote from The Executioner's Song


“when i first saw him i thought he was as beautiful as a knight from the romances, like a troubadour, like a poet. I thought i could be like a lady in a tower and he could sing beneath my window and
persuade me to love him. But although he has the looks of a
poet he doesn't have the wit. I can never get more than two
words out of him, and i begin to feel that i demean myself in trying to please him.”
― Philippa Gregory, quote from The Constant Princess


“Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Hard Times


“It's hard keeping everything the same when the same things look and feel so different”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from Leaving Paradise


“Can she be divorced?" I asked. "And famous for her commercials
and ideas?"
She can be anything," Boo told me, and this is what I remember most, her freckled
face so solemn, as if
she knew she was the first to tell me. "And so can you.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from Dreamland


Interesting books

The Big Money
(2K)
The Big Money
by John Dos Passos
Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves
(29.4K)
Too Big to Fail: The...
by Andrew Ross Sorkin
The Return of Rafe MacKade
(9.9K)
The Return of Rafe M...
by Nora Roberts
New York Dead
(11.3K)
New York Dead
by Stuart Woods
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
(2.5K)
One Minute to Midnig...
by Michael Dobbs
Flotsam
(1.1K)
Flotsam
by Erich Maria Remarque

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.