“We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“The world inside myself is vaster and richer than this paltry plane, peopled with mere galaxies and gods.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“That’s the secret to performance: conviction. The right note played tentatively still misses its mark, but play boldly and no one will question you. If one believes there is truth in art – and I do – then it’s troubling how similar the skill of performing is to lying. Maybe lying is itself a kind of art. I think about that more than I should.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“He did not know the truth of me, yet he had perceived something true about me that no one else had ever noticed. And in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—he believed me good, believed me worth taking seriously, and his belief, for one vertigi-nous moment, made me want to be better than I was.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“For future reference: do not underestimate the seductive power of math.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Who will kiss you? Who will rock you to sleep?" His voice was slow, drowsy.
"You never did," I said, trying to tease him. "You were more father to me than my father, but you never did that."
"Someone should. Someone should love you. I will bite him if he will not.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I’m attracting small children,” Orma muttered, twisting his hat in his hands. “Shoo it away, will you?”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I mistook you for a metaphor.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Your lies didn't stop me loving you; your truth hasn't stopped me either.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I became the very air; I was full of stars. I was the soaring spaces between the spires of the cathedral, the solemn breath of chimneys, a whispered prayer upon the winter wind. I was silence,and I was music, one clear transcendent chord rising toward Heaven. I believed, then, that I would have risen bodily into the sky but for the anchor of his hand in my hair and his round soft perfect mouth.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“He was laughing, silently, and then we were both laughing, and then something changed. It was as if I had been watching the world through oiled parchment or smoked glass, which was yanked abruptly away. Everything grew very clear and bright; the music burst forth in majesty; we stood still and the room turned around us; and there was Kiggs, right in the middle of all of it, laughing.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Love is not a disease...I cannot let them cut you out of me, nor her either. I will cling to my sickness, if it is a sickness. I will hold it close to me like the sun.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“He looked up at the reddening sky and said with a self-deprecating laugh, "You put me to shame, Seraphina. Your bravery always has."
"It's not bravery; it's bullheaded bumbling."
He shook his head, staring off into the middle distance. "I know courage when I see it, and when I lack it.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I barely noticed loneliness anymore; it was my normal condition, by necessity if not by nature.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“How dare the world be beautiful when I was so horrifying?”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“The borderlands of madness used to have much sterner signage around them than they do now.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I scrupulously hide every legitimate reason for people to hate me, and it turns out they don’t need legitimate reasons. Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Music is only work when someone else makes you do it.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Peaches and Cheese”:
The vagabond sun winks down through the trees,
While lilacs, like memories, waft on the breeze,
My friend, I was born for days such as these,
To inhale perfume,
And cut through the gloom,
And feast like a king upon peaches and cheese!
I’ll travel this wide world and go where I please,
Can’t stop my wand’ring, it’s like a disease.
My only regret as I cross the high seas:
What I leave behind,
Though I hope to find,
My own golden city of peaches and cheese!”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“The truth may not be told. Here is an acceptable lie.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Please, Orma, I’ve already gotten you in so much trouble—”
“That I can’t possibly get into more. Take it.” He wouldn’t stop glaring at me until I’d put the earring back on its cord. “You are all that’s left of Linn. Her own people won’t even say her name. I—I value your continued existence.”
I could not speak; he had pierced me to my very heart.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I was half lawyer; I always noticed the loopholes.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I felt lighter when I had finished, and for once emptiness was a sweet relief and a condition to be treasured.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“He looked at me again and his eyes shone in the lamplight, or with the inner light of delighted anticipation.
His enthusiasm made him beautiful.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“A feeling rose in me, and I just let it, because what harm could it do? It only had another thirty-two adagio bars of life in this world. Twenty-four. Sixteen. Eight more bars in which I love you. Three. Two. One.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Always I hev my fists and my war pipes!”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
Rachel Hartman
Born place: in Lexington, KY
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“One night between sunset and river
On the old bridge we stood, you and I.
Will you ever forget it, I queried,
- That particular swift that went by?
And you answered, so earnestly: Never!
And what sobs made us suddenly shiver,
What a cry life emitted in flight!
Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever,
You and I on the old bridge one night.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from The Gift
“VIOLET: August . . . your month. Locusts are raging. “Summer psalm become summer wrath.” ’Course it’s only August out there. In here . . . who knows? All right . . . okay. “The Carriage held but just Ourselves,” dum-de-dum . . . mm, best I got . . . Emily Dickinson’s all I got . . . something something, “Horse’s Heads Were Toward Eternity . . .”
― Tracy Letts, quote from August: Osage County
“And knowing that the only alternative to your grief is the nothingness that’s fast approaching, you try to embrace your own sorrow, to be open and empty and let it all pass through you. This is the key, you have learned – to relinquish control, to relinquish the desire for control. Even in this late drama, to try to control is to go mad. And so you do your best to let it all go.”
― Ron Currie Jr., quote from Everything Matters!
“I have yet to hear God's audible voice, although I have often felt led by God in more subtle ways.”
― Tony Dungy, quote from Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices & Priorities of a Winning Life
“It had been less than an hour since the cops led Abby away and already he missed her like a severed limb. It was embarrassing. How could hormones and hydrostatic pressure make you feel like this? Love”
― Christopher Moore, quote from Bite Me
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