Alaya Dawn Johnson Quotes & Sayings

After everything that's happened, her fear of requesting a prescription or of asking Trevor about his mother baffles her. Shouldn't life-altering events make you less afraid of the little stuff? But it's the little stuff that paralyzes her: talking, eating, dressing, sleeping. Everyone in school is afraid of the apocalypse; she is afraid of living through it. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

To love light, you have to love dark. I'm not trying to be profound, I know you'll understand. I don't mean that you have to hate to love, or that you have to die to live.
I mean that sometimes, you turn out the lights just to turn them back on. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

I'm nothing but forward momentum and a curse. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

In the dark, I seem to stretch. Without a body to witness, I grow and grow with my pleasure. I feel like a constellation, a concept hung on a scattering of stars. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

The summer kings are gods, and we are finally, in the end, just men. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

But I know better than anyone how dangerous trying can be, and how destructive. Maybe it's better to let bad things happen than tear yourself apart trying to stop the inevitable. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Hands and lips and teeth, and you'd forgotten-no, you'd never known-this way of knowing someone, this dissolution of self, this autophagy. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

What if we're going too far?" "Where else would we be going? — Alaya Dawn Johnson

The kingdom of sleep demands its forfeits, and the world looks very different through eyes cracked and yellow with its denial. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Then you remember that Jack
that's his name, the mac & cheese
plays lacrosse. That's probably where he got all those yummy muscles. You need two hands for lacrosse.
A pinky? Damn, you might as well starve yourself. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Gods are what people worship. Men are what die. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Answering the questions feels like beating my skull against the wall of my carrel, — Alaya Dawn Johnson

His eyes widen. I have bound us, and he knows it. He is so beautiful, so warm and cruel and distant that I think, without the connection, I might just run away. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

How much of yourself will you give them in exchange? — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Instead, there's ice in my ears and earth in my nose and stars in my eyes. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

I could watch him forever, and he vanishes before I can blink. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

They think they've gone to heaven," he says. "They don't realize that means they're dead. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Our sex is a little death each time he touches me, much longed-for. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Ieyascu looks bright and flat, heavy strokes on an invisible canvas. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

a smile that always makes you feel like you're in on a joke. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

The kings die so that their choice of the next Queen can be irrevocable, unassailable, and unprejudiced. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Enki kisses my ear. He turns my head until I taste just the corner of his mouth. I am crystal clear, I am a pond, I am a light. I am nothing at all. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Think of it like the best mac and cheese you've ever had. No neon yellow Velveeta and bread crumbs. I'm talking gourmet cheddar, the expensive stuff from Vermont that crackles as it melts into the crust on top. Imagine if right before you were about to tear into it, the mac and cheese starts talking to you? — Alaya Dawn Johnson

So I take my lover, my king, and I put him in a pedestal and I cut him down. A man, like the ones who ruined the world. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

I can always tell when Gil's been with Enki, because he moves like he might start dancing at any moment and he hardly hears a word I say to him. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

The past stands in the path of the future, knowing it will be crushed. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

I burn where he last touched me. I stare at the space where he has been until everything fades. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

shoulders touching in a way that's only mostly platonic. It's inevitable, she supposes, that God would call her bluff. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Ignoring your subconscious is like neglecting the termite infestation in your basement. Sooner or later, the consequences of neglect will far outweigh the momentary unpleasantness of clearing the nests. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

You can't samba in a data stream, — Alaya Dawn Johnson

A good rival is almost like a friend, isn't she? You make me try harder. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

There's a song", I say.
"There's always a song", he says. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Gil's hands imprison my own. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

morality is the change that falls from your pockets when you climb up the ladder. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

He turns away and I'm overwhelmed with an echo, with the sense that the words in my mouth aren't my own. But of course they are. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

I open my mouth - to scream, I think, or maybe just to cry - but he puts a careful finger on my lips. I breathe a little of his steam, and it warms me all the way through. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Amid all that blood of the dying sun, the verde was still alive. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Some mornings I thought I saw your worry frost our blankets, hang in the air with your cloudy breath. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

I've loved you for so long and You're beautiful, won't you dance? — Alaya Dawn Johnson

I watch, nearly shaking with the need to say something and having nothing to say, as she lets a flame incinerate the precious paper to a dusting of ash on the floor. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

Something scrapes the concrete at the far end of the tunnel. I turn to Enki, hoping it's just another cleaning bot, but his eyebrows have come together in that particular way I know means trouble. He doesn't bother to speak, just looks at me, and I hear him perfectly: Move your ass. — Alaya Dawn Johnson

What is this, Enki?" says the Queen. "Do you not honor me?"
Enki's smile is wide and bright. "I give you the greatest honor," he says.
"You are dressed in the manner of a slave," says she, "in a city where there are none."
"There aren't," he agrees, though now his smile seems too sharp for his words. "But there is the verde."
"And what of it?"
"I am dressed in the manner of my people."
"Are we not your people?" And we see that the Queen is torn between amusement and anger. Enki is leading her in a dance, but has not tapped out its rhythm.
"You are everything to me."
"And yet you come before us hardly as a king."
"I come before you," says Enki, "as a simple verde boy." He takes a quick step back, almost skipping, and his dust-lightened hair bobs around his ears. "I will leave you as a king." And when the drums start, that's how he dances: as a king. — Alaya Dawn Johnson