Mostly Dead Things Quotes

“We spent so much time looking for pieces of ourselves in other people that we never realized they were busy searching for the same things in us.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“Need, my father had written. To need meant to be vulnerable. It was one of the scariest things I could imagine. Needing anything meant you were open to invasion. It meant you had no control of yourself.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“You don't know what love is, I thought, wanting to smack him. Love was the steady burn of acid indigestion. Love was a punch in the gut that ruptured your spleen. Love was a broken telephone that refused to dial out.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“Though I planned out everything, my life was somehow made up of an endless series of unwanted surprises.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“You don’t know what love is, I thought, wanting to smack him. Love was the steady burn of acid indigestion. Love was a punch in the gut that ruptured your spleen. Love was a broken telephone that refused to dial out. Milo told Brynn he loved her and I could see from the look on his face he thought the words were a magical incantation. Say the word love and it’s there for you; say the word love and the other person feels it too. What I should have told him that day: love makes you an open wound, susceptible to infection. But he was young then and so was I, and I wanted their happiness more than my own. So I swallowed my pain and let myself pretend love could flourish if I didn’t stand in its way.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“There was a security in seeing myself mirrored back.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“She wheeled around, chin set angrily. "My entire adult life that man told me what to do. What I could like, what was acceptable to talk about. It was like living inside a clenched fist.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“What I should have told him that day: love makes you an open wound, susceptible to infection. But he was young then and so was I, and I wanted their happiness more than my own. So I swallowed my pain and let myself pretend love could flourish if I didn't stand in its way.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“It hadn't felt necessary to learn more about my mother outside of her existence on the periphery of my life. She cleaned our clothes and bought us groceries. Made our meals, mopped and dusted, trimmed the tree. My father was the one I'd admired. He was the one I'd wanted to be like.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“Problem solving is hunting.
It is savage pleasure and we are born to it. —Thomas Harris”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“We spent so much time looking for pieces of ourselves in other people that we never realized that they were busy searching for the same things in us.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“Love was a thing that needed constant care. Our intimacy was an uprooted plant, shriveled and withered.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“The best way to get through anything at home is to just stay at work.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“Too much feeling in his body to handle anything appropriately.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“I'd hated that because it didn't feel how I expected romance to feel: stressful and kind of blood-soaked, a constant power struggle.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“That was the thing about Bastien. He might run down some peacocks in the middle of a golf course, but at the end of the day he had too much love in him to deal with how shitty human beings were to each other.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“Some entrails we saved, some we didn't, but we always made sure the floor stayed clean.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“To need meant to be vulnerable. It was one of the scariest things I could imagine. Needing anything meant you were open to invasion. It meant you had no control of yourself.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“As she hovered over me in the morning light, I watched her finger trace a line from my face down the naked center of my body. “Where’s your seam?” Finger tickling, searching. “Where do you crawl out?” I put her hand where I wanted. We kissed and she searched for the place where I’d break open. When she finally found it, my insides shook and all my skin felt replaced with something new.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things

“We spend so much time looking for pieces of ourselves in other people that we never realized they were busy searching for the same things in us.”
― Kristen Arnett, Mostly Dead Things