The Midnight Lie Quotes

“It’s a midnight lie... a kind of lie told for someone else’s sake, a lie that sits between goodness and wrong, just as midnight is the moment between night and morning.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“Nirrim, I can't be good to you."
"Then be bad.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“Tell me what you want,” she said, “and I will make it happen.”
I want my liar, I thought.
I want her mouth.
I want her perfume to rub off on my skin like bruised grass.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I wanted to say, I would rather have you for a little time than no time at all.
I will remember you perfectly. My memory will touch your skin, your lips. The memory will hurt, but it will be mine.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I realized that wanting is a kind of power even if you don’t get what you want. Wanting illuminates everything you need, and how the world has failed you.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“Her words came in a sudden rush. “You’re hard to look away from. I can’t look away from you. I don’t know how anyone could.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“But nothing is as it is. Everything comes from something. There is nothing and no one without a past.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I was lonely for her even though she was right in front of me.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“You talk a lot.”
“I lie a lot, too. Fair warning.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I love everything more when I leave it. Maybe, then, it’s the most I’ll ever love it.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“So you tell me what would make a good, quiet girl get herself in trouble, especially when she had so much to lose. Tell me.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“It occurred to me that it was a special person, a gentle one, who allowed another to keep her secrets.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I am a thief only of hearts.”
“We agreed. We agreed about the bragging.”
“That wasn’t bragging. That was true.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I like to wear a man’s clothes and I like that it startles people, and then even if I hate dresses I enjoy wearing one to show you that when you thought I was one thing and changed your mind you must now change it again. I like disappearing and showing up when I am least expected. I like pretending. Sometimes I forget myself, and fall for my own game.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I pity who I was then: a girl riven by her mistake, beholden to the needs of others, and trained to disminish her own. I was a snake that had not yet learned to strike.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I want you to stay in the city for a month."

"Why?"

Because I would miss you. Because I am not ready to let you go.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I did not, in the end, want to share the truth, because the words of love inside me felt like the only part of her that could ever remain mine.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“You make light of everything.”
“I make nothing too heavy to bear.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“What did you think?"

I blurted, "That when you wanted something, you wouldn't rest until you got it."

"Only when we are talking about women, dear Nirrim.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“It is a midnight lie, she said. A kind of lie told for someone else’s sake, a lie that sits between goodness and wrong, just as midnight is the moment between night and morning. Or a lie that is not technically false, like a misleading truth.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“Is home a home if you can never leave it? You think you’re in prison now, but you have been in prison your whole life. It’s just big enough that you’re able to forget what it really is. Don’t you want to see more?”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“It was a new thought to me: that you could take heart when someone escapes the trap that trapped you.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“A snake will not stay to please you. It will do nothing it does not want to do.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“What do you do when you can’t make something right?
When you know you won’t be forgiven?
You lie.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“You’re beautiful,” I told her. The fountains’ jets bubbled around us.
“You’re foxed,” she said.
“You stare at me sometimes, too. I see you sneaking glances.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“People can refuse to see a possibility. Maybe they don’t want it. Maybe it never occurs to them, or is even awful to them. But people make bad choices when they don’t know the full range of choices. People come to wrong conclusions if they don’t understand all the possible questions.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“Wanting something doesn't always mean it is owed to you.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“I had had no idea that people in the Ward were watching me, that they knew so much about me and they would miss me if I never returned. That they could even want me never to return.
It was a new thought to me: that you could take heart when someone escapes the trap that trapped you.
And yet it shouldn’t have been a new thought, since I had already felt this whenever I forged a passport. I had simply not realized that this was what I had felt.
I had put love into each stitch in each passport’s binding. I just hadn’t known that was what it was, because the only love I had recognized as given to me was the kind that clutched tight, and never let go.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“You seem hard to hold, I guess. Your attention."

He took a moment to reply. "That might be true, usually. But you hold mine.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie

“No,” I said. “Thank you for everything. For this.”
“I am a gift from the gods, but I confess that I didn’t create the sea.”
― Marie Rutkoski, The Midnight Lie