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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Time, as it grows old, teaches all things.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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 think I was measuring you by me. I was assuming we're the same, because that's what humans do, isn't it? Automatically. Without thinking. We see everyone through our own lens and assume it's the only possible way of being.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Maybe I'm "reading it all wrong" after all. Maybe I'm just jumping ahead again, making assumptions, preparing for my own heartbreak, planning for rejection. Creating a schedule for a future that isn't going to happen.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Not everyone is like me: that much is painfully clear.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“And there we have it: I am a neurotic mess. I guess this is what happens when you live with a brain that treats every second of existence as if there's been an urgent crime that needs to be solved immediately.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Not everyone obsesses, analyzes, struggles to let go and move on. Not everyone holds on to every single social interaction with their fingertips in terror, as if dangling off a cliff's edge.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“So when Barry accused me of not being a People Person, he wasn't wrong.

Sometimes I barely feel like a person, singular.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Will's brown eyes are suddenly trained on me.

Stiffening, I stay as still as I can and attempt to look like a person who cannot feel themselves being studied like a bug in a jar. I'm being a normal human, right? This is how people sit, isn't it? Am I jittering, rocking, bouncing, clawing? Has Will noticed that I'm just copying his body language and facial expressions, or is he thinking how pretty I look in the sun? Does he like me, or is he faintly creeped out by me? Is he interested, or bored? Is he considering kissing me, or wondering why I look like I've only been given this body recently and still have no idea how to drive it?

("Cassandra seems to believe she might be an alien.")

It's all a complete mystery.

All I know is the longer he studies me, the more confused I become. Also, the sheer effort of not accidentally playing piano fingers on my ice cream is exhausting: it feels like I'm fighting the Colchian dragon and hoping nobody will notice.”
― 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 always happens. Always. Little by little, something inside me comes to the surface and drives everyone away.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“How do people do this? How do total strangers weave conversation back and forth like this without tying themselves up in knots? How do they know what to say next? More importantly, why? It's like watching a musical where they all break into the same dance without rehearsing it first: totally inexplicable.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“I can't help wondering: Am I a monster?
And--if so--was I born or was I made?”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse

“Not everyone is thirty-one years old and has zero serious romantic experience. Not everyone finds love confusing and surreal: mythical and unreachable, like a story told a long time ago about other people.”
― Holly Smale, Cassandra in Reverse