Chris Adrian Quotes & Sayings

If there's a magic pony in the story, chances are I'll read it. — Chris Adrian

The knowledge of my depravity is the only thing that makes me special ... that I have always always always known, and have never for a moment been able to forget, that there is something terribly wrong with me. — Chris Adrian

I used to feel sorry for them, or sad. Not so much any more. Now I wonder what they did, and I know what they did, and all I can think is how all that water is barely enough to cover it up. — Chris Adrian

When people ask me which I would rather give up, writing or medicine, it's like being asked which eye I'd prefer to have poked out with a spoon: neither, and please use a fork. — Chris Adrian

The stories that engaged me as a kid were all science fiction. Later, it turned out that I didn't have the language to talk about what was bothering me in a way that was straightforward. — Chris Adrian

He never got a really proper look at them, but the situation told him it must be a swarming flock of vaginas that flew all around his head, biting him toothlessly on his ears and his cheeks and his neck. — Chris Adrian

We are so lucky to live here, he would say, and she couldn't disagree. They were lucky that the earth had conspired to heap up such startling beauty in one place, and they were lucky that it hadn't all fallen apart yet in a a geological catastrophe. — Chris Adrian

But as surely as the moon rises and the sun sets, depravity passes down through the ages, because there is always a gap between who we are and who we should be, and our parents, molested by regret, conceive us under the false hope that we will be better than them, and everything they do, every hug and blow, only makes certain that we never will be. — Chris Adrian

They had been quarrelling for as long as they had been in love. — Chris Adrian

It takes four angels to oversee an apocalypse: a recorder to make the book that would be scripture in the new world; a preserver to comfort and save those selected to be the first generation; an accuser to remind them why they suffer; and a destroyer to revoke the promise of survival and redemption, and to teach them the awful truth about furious sheltering grace. — Chris Adrian

Shakespeare shows you what it is possible to do in English as a writer - but also shows you that you might as well give up. As it's all been done before and hundreds of years ago. So I have had that long-standing relationship of oppression and inspiration. — Chris Adrian

I want to be a good creature for reasons beyond sharing a life with a good man. — Chris Adrian

He went through rooms he named as he discovered them, and which he hardly had time to appreciate before he'd flung open a door at the far end and plunged through ... and in the Library of All the Same Book he actually stopped to examine a few of the volumes, all titled Various, that lined the shelves. — Chris Adrian

It seemed a marvel to her that any mortal should suffer for lack of love, and yet she had never known a mortal who didn't feel unloved. There was enough love just in this ugly hallway, she thought, that no one should ever feel the lack of it again. She peered at the parents, imagining their hearts like machines, manufacturing surfeit upon surfeit of love for their children, and then wondered how something could be so awesome and so utterly powerless. — Chris Adrian

I shall not weep for any of them, nor regret their fate, nor shake one feather in sympathy. — Chris Adrian

I worry that we all just sat around, after a while, trying to enjoy a ride that was never meant to be fun. — Chris Adrian

There are reasons to go on living despite what horrors may come in your life. And love informs those reasons. — Chris Adrian

After a few drinks, my mom would recite her lines as Portia in 'The Merchant of Venice' from her high school play. But I first discovered Shakespeare properly when I was about five. I used to look for the most complicated books I could find and pretend to be reading them. I wanted people to think I was smart. — Chris Adrian

I am ... sad and angry. Why is my spirit so sad and angry? I look back at my life and all I can remember is rage and rage and rage. — Chris Adrian

If I showed you what was in my heart," she said, "it would burn you to a cinder.
"I've tried to burn you similarly," it said, "but you never even noticed when I opened my chest. — Chris Adrian

I had always wanted to retell a Shakespeare play. It was an ambition from college days. But in order to be able to do it ... the circumstances in my life didn't come together for a long time. — Chris Adrian

My natural tendency is to write about zombie bunnies, but one of my first writing teachers got incorporated into my writing superego, and I keep hearing his admonition to make things feel more real the weirder they get. — Chris Adrian

I was told by my mother at the age of five that I was going to be a doctor, and that was the end of the conversation. I was presented with a toy stethoscope and told to learn how to use it. — Chris Adrian

I wanted to tell you that I was so sad I felt as if I might be happy, or in love, simply because such powerful feelings can appear the same to the naive. I was mighty with grief, and I thought I should be empowered by it. I thought my hands should shine with a yellow light, and that should I reach out to touch our mother on the head, I would call her back from the place she'd gone. — Chris Adrian