Katja Millay Quotes & Sayings

Josh isn't in love with me and I'm not in love with him."
"Sell it to someone who's buying, Sunshine. Have you seen the way he looks at you?" I've seen the way he looks at me but I don't know what it means. "Like you're a seventeenth-century, hand-carved table in mint condition. — Katja Millay

What'd you wish?"
"I can't tell you that!" I say indignantly.
"Why not?"
"Because it won't come true." Do I really need to say this? I'm pretty sure it's a given in wish situations.
"Bullshit."
"It's the rule," I insist.
"It's only the rule with birthday cakes and shooting stars, not pennies in fountains. — Katja Millay

Was the cake at least good? He knows where my heart lies. — Katja Millay

Now - a profanity-spewing guttersnipe being dragged out of a crack house on Cops. I — Katja Millay

I stayed in therapy long enough to know that nothing that happened to me was my fault. I didn't do anything to invite it or deserve it. But that just makes it worse. Maybe I don't blame myself for what happened, but when they tell you that something was completely and utterly random, they're also telling you something else. That nothing you do matters. It doesn't matter if you do everything right, if you dress the right way and act the right way and follow all the rules, because evil will find you anyway. Evil's resourceful that way ... They tell you it was random to make you feel blameless. But all I hear them telling me is that I have no control, and if I have no control, then I'm powerless. I would have preferred being blamed. — Katja Millay

No matter how good he looks right now, Josh Bennett without work boots & the smell of sawdust is all sorts of wrong. — Katja Millay

I decline the coffee. I don't drink it, because no matter how much sugar I put into it, it still tastes like ass-water to me. Maybe it's because my taste buds are so desensitized to sweet that anything not comprised of at least ninety percent sugar tastes wrong — Katja Millay

He knew he wasn't supposed to die. He was supposed to come back so he could meet her because his heaven was where she was, even if he didn't know it at the time. And that's why he wasn't scared. — Katja Millay

My closet and I are on my own. My closet is of no use to me. It may actually be laughing at me. It's true, I hear it. — Katja Millay

if I could take a picture of the expression that passes between them, I would, and then I'd shove it in both their faces so they could never deny it again. — Katja Millay

If I could be alone, I would. Gratefully. I'd rather be alone than have to pretend I'm okay. — Katja Millay

I like finding things no one else is looking for. Things that got lost or forgotten, shoved in a corner. Stuff I never knew existed. I don't even need to buy it. I just like to find it and know that it's there. That's the part I like. — Katja Millay

Dying isn't so bad after you've done it once. . . — Katja Millay

If Edna St. Vincent Millay was right and childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies, then my childhood ended when I was fifteen. — Katja Millay

I am pressed so hard against the earth by the weight of reality that some days I wonder how I am still able to lift my feet to walk. — Katja Millay

What about Josh?" I think there's more to that question than she's letting on but she's testing the waters. Salvation, I write. She looks at the word and nods. And for a minute she looks as sad as I feel.
"That fits, I think. — Katja Millay

I'm trying to see the magic in everyday miracles now: the fact that my heart still beats, that I can lift my feet off of the earth to walk and that there is something in me worthy of love. — Katja Millay

Daylight won't protect you from anything. Bad things happen all the time; they don't wait until after dinner — Katja Millay

And that's the most confusing part - figuring out what's true. — Katja Millay

I believe in God, Sunshine. I've always believed that God exists," he says. And what he says next isn't self-pity or angst or melodrama. It's truth. "I just know that he hates me." Maybe — Katja Millay

Everything feels endless right now. — Katja Millay

It's not the sound itself that bothers me; it's just the fact that it's loud. The loud sounds make it impossible to hear the soft sounds and the soft sounds are the ones you have to be afraid of. — Katja Millay

I would like to believe in the dream of second chances. For both of us. — Katja Millay

Seriously, Josh. What the hell? — Katja Millay

It's like having a ghost in my garage. I feel like I'm being haunted. With all the dead people I've got in my corner, you'd think one of them would be the one hanging around. — Katja Millay

If I'm going to be rejected, I'd like it to come complete with humiliation. — Katja Millay

...but She chooses her battles these days and I'm not sure this one would make the cut. — Katja Millay

He's the be all and end all of my friends right now. — Katja Millay

I don't want to fix you. I want to fix this. — Katja Millay

So, you actually cooked tonight? He regards me skeptically. I snort. Because snorting is attractive. — Katja Millay

As soon as it's out of my mouth, I cringe, realizing that it's probably pretty crappy to complain about your parents to someone who doesn't have any. It's like bitching that your shoes are too tight to someone who's walking across broken glass barefoot. — Katja Millay

His hands are miracles. I can watch them for hours, transforming wood into something it never dreamed of being. — Katja Millay

Josh Bennett laughs, and for one minute, everything is right in the world. — Katja Millay

Thats the irony of Josh and me, and it shames me every time I think about it. He has no family. No one to love him. I'm surrounded by love and I dont want any of it. I piss all over what he woud thank God for. And if I needed more proof that I have no soul, then there it is. — Katja Millay

Do you know what I found?
Of course I do, and you know that I do. You just want to ask for dramatic effect and then you're going to tell me anyway. — Katja Millay

It's not that I wanted to be dead, I just felt like I should be. Which is why it's hard when everyone expects you to be grateful simply because you're not. — Katja Millay

The world should be full of Josh Bennetts. But it's not. I had the only one. And I threw him away. — Katja Millay

And there are so many missing that the ones that are left don't fit together anymore. — Katja Millay

I didn't belong in this world anymore. It's not that I wanted to be dead, I just felt like I should be. — Katja Millay

But she's my tangent girl and I'll follow her if this is where she wants to go. — Katja Millay

I wish I could have saved you, he says finally. And this is what it always comes back to. Salvation. Him saving me. Me saving him. Impossibilities, because there is no such thing, and it's not what we ever needed from each other anyway. — Katja Millay

Drew fills all the silence without ever realizing that he's doing it. Josh melts into the silence like he's part of it. (pg 111) — Katja Millay

People who go around advertising their birthdays are douchebags. It's a fact. You can look it up on Wikipedia. — Katja Millay

You get halfway through with your life and you realize you haven't done the things you wanted to do or become what you'd thought you'd become and it's disheartening. — Katja Millay

There's a reverence in the way he kisses me that frightens me, because it's the most wonderful thing I've ever felt. — Katja Millay

You didn't get a choice in what happened to you. Neither did
we. But you have a choice in what happens now. We don't. You're the one in control and all we can do is sit on the sidelines and watch, even if you
keep making the wrong calls over and over again." We're obviously veering into sports metaphor territory. "We're not going to force you to do
anything you aren't ready to do. You've had enough forced on you. But you have to make a decision about how long you're going to let this define
your life. — Katja Millay

I can't find a street sign, but I know I ran fast and I ran far and I didn't pay attention to anything. I broke every rule that I have and I've gotten what I deserve for it. It's the middle of the night and I am alone and lost and drenched in darkness. — Katja Millay

Then, I'll find an empty restroom and check my hair and fix my lipstick, or as we cowards like to call it, hide. — Katja Millay

I like names. I collect them: names, origins, meanings. They're an easy thing to collect. They don't cost anything and they don't really take up any space. I like to look at them and pretend that they mean something; and maybe they don't, but the pretending is nice. I keep most of them on the walls of my bedroom at home - home where I used to live. I keep the ones that echo. Good names with significance. Not the crap everyone seems to be using these days. I like foreign names, too; the unusual ones that you rarely see. If I ever had a baby I'd pick one of those, but babies aren't really something I see in my future, even the far off one.
I fold up the papers to put them away, glancing one more time. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch one of the Sarahs again, and I smile. It reminds me of the one amusing part of my day. — Katja Millay

People like Josh Bennett and I don't get perfect. Most of the time, we don't even get remotely tolerable. And that's why it scares me. Because, even if there was such a thing to begin with, perfect never lasts. — Katja Millay

A few minutes later, she comes out of my bedroom wearing one of my t-shirts, and it might almost be worse than seeing her in no shirt at all. — Katja Millay

I know at that moment what he's given me and it isn't a chair. It's an invitation, a welcome, the knowledge that I am accepted here. He hasn't given me a place to sit. He's given me a place to belong. — Katja Millay

Everything is hell now and I deserve it, but I can handle pain. — Katja Millay

I never realized that grief and self-pity weren't the same thing. I thought grieving was what I was doing all this time I had been feeling sorry for myself, but it wasn't. So for the first time in nearly three years, I let myself grieve. — Katja Millay

I just wanted one person who would look at me and not want to see someone else."
"Who looks at you like that?" I lift my head up and lower my hands so I can see her face, and I can't imagine anyone looking at this girl and wanting to see anything but her.
"Everyone who loves me."
"Who is it they want to see?
"A dead girl. — Katja Millay

I doubt taking in a sullen, bitter, teenage girl with more issues than National Geographic is at the center of the vision board for a single woman in her early thirties. — Katja Millay

most. If I could be alone, I would. Gratefully. I'd rather be alone than have to pretend I'm okay. But they won't give me that option. So I'll settle for being with someone who at least doesn't love me as much. I'm thankful for Margot. Not that I tell her this. Not that I tell her anything. I don't. — Katja Millay

These days I'm missing everything. I'm haunted by music; music I can hear, but never play again. Melodies that taunt me note by note, mocking me with the simple fact that they exist. — Katja Millay

It amazes me how people are so afraid of what can happen in the dark, but they don't give a second thought about their safety during the day; as if the sun offers some sort of ultimate protection from all the evil in the world. It doesn't ... Daylight won't protect you from anything, Bad things happen all the time; they don't wait until after dinner. The Sea of Tranquillity — Katja Millay

I'm tired of being responsible for other people's misery. I can't even put up with my own. — Katja Millay

I can always think about cake. — Katja Millay

I feel like grabbing my crotch and checking to see if my balls are still there because I think they may be in her pocket and I need to get them back. — Katja Millay

In memory of my father, because he said so — Katja Millay

You are the only good reason. — Katja Millay

It's a chair. Stop overanalyzing it. I'm not selling it and I'm not giving it to someone else. I made it for you. It's yours. — Katja Millay

Maybe nobody knows how. Sometimes it's easier to pretend nothing is wrong than to face the fact that everything is wrong, but you're powerless to do anything about it. — Katja Millay

If self-adoration were cologne, he would be the boy you couldn't stand next to without choking. — Katja Millay

Didn't you say she lives in Josh's neighborhood? Mrs. Leighton asks. I think I actually hear her loading the bullets into that question. — Katja Millay

My mother's voice. It's the first thing I remember after I opened my eyes. My beautiful girl. You came back to us. But she was wrong. — Katja Millay

Good morning, Sunshine. — Katja Millay

I haven't started counting yet. I wonder if it's just me or if it's like that for everybody; that every time someone dies you start counting how much time has passed since they've been gone. First you count it in minutes, then in hours. You count in days, then weeks, then months. Then one day you realize that you aren't counting anymore, and you don't even know when you stopped. That's the moment they're gone. — Katja Millay

I live in the world without magic or miracles. A place where there are no clairvoyants or shape-shifters, no angels or superhuman boys to save you. A place where people die and music disintegrates and things suck. I am pressed so heard against the earth by the weight of reality that some days i wonder how am i still able to lift my feet to walk. — Katja Millay

It's the Josh Bennett equivalent of tattooing her name across my chest. — Katja Millay

There are so many things that can break you if there's nothing to hold you together. — Katja Millay

People believe in God because they don't believe in themselves. They need something else to depend on or to blame instead of taking responsibility for their own shit - crap, excrement, waste, mistakes, faults. — Katja Millay

I shrug. I'm an excellent shrugger. It's rivaled only by my ability to nod. — Katja Millay

I'm wondering if I'm allowed to hate Josh Bennett, because I'm thinking I might start. — Katja Millay

Wonderful. Last night's dinner, the charred remains of my dignity, and apparently, now, my undergarments, too. What else did I leave on Josh Bennett's bathroom floor? — Katja Millay

People who have never been through any sort of shit always assume that they know how you should react to having your life destroyed. And the people who have been through shit think you're suppose to deal with it the exact same way they did. As if there's a playbook for surviving hell. — Katja Millay

The silent thing is definitely a barrier in terms of making friends — Katja Millay

I was ripped out of the water and thrown and smashed into a thousand pieces that I can't put back together. I don't know where they go. And there are so many missing that the ones that are left don't fit together anymore. I think I'll stay in pieces. I can shift them, rearrange, depending on the day, depending on what I need to be. — Katja Millay

Not my fault that you're distractingly pretty.
I have to take a minute to confirm to the pissed off part of my brain that still works that, yes, in fact, I did just say that. And I don't know if distractingly is even a word. If it is, it's a stupid one. Like me. — Katja Millay

I can afford just about anything I'm willing to pay for. — Katja Millay

It's a little bit devastating being surrounded by people who can do what you can't anymore. People who create. People whose souls don't live in their bodies anymore because they've leached so much of themselves into their work. — Katja Millay

I don't know how to say it - after all this time, I'm not even sure that I can - but I have to break her last rule, because if she knows nothing else, I need her to know this one thing.
'I love you, Sunshine,' I tell her, before I lose my nerve. 'And I don't give a shit whether you want me to or not. — Katja Millay

I was a lost cause a long time ago. — Katja Millay

I don't know if I'm okay. It shouldn't be possible to be this close to another person. To let them crawl inside you. — Katja Millay

I know she's new here. If not, she's made some drastic, unfortunate transformation over the summer, because I'm more than aware of most of the people on this campus, and even if I wasn't, I'd remember the girl who comes to school looking like an undead whore. — Katja Millay

Everything in me turns on and shuts down at the same time. I am weak and strong. I am terrified and brave. I am lost and found. I am here and gone. I'm afraid I'm going to stop breathing again. — Katja Millay

Do real boys actually call girls baby? I don't have enough experience to know. I do know that if a guy ever called me baby, I'd probably laugh in his face. Or choke him. — Katja Millay

I wished my mother was here tonight, which is stupid, because it's an impossible wish." He shrugs and turns to me, drowning the smile that cracks me every time.
"It's not stupid to want to see her again."
"It wasn't so much that I wanted to see her again," he says, looking at me with the depth of more than seventeen years in his eyes. "I wanted her to see you. — Katja Millay

He needs to be able to fix things and make it all better; to believe that you're okay so that he can believe that he's okay. — Katja Millay

I think I'll stay in pieces. I can shift them, rearrange, depending on the day, depending on what I need to be. I can change on a whim and be so many different girls and none of them has to be me. — Katja Millay

Maybe I just wanted the girl to look at me again. (Josh) — Katja Millay

He's so blatantly obvious, it's almost inspired. Almost. — Katja Millay

Sarah. I smiled. I couldn't help but appreciate the absolute perfection of the name; bland, common, and wholly unoriginal. Best of all, it means princess. — Katja Millay

Congratulations, then. You wanted to be ruined? Well, you did yourself one better because you wrecked me, too, Sunshine. Now we're both worth shit. — Katja Millay

I'm under a microscope where my every facial expression is being studied. It makes me want to scream, but I can't, so I just swallow it like dirt and blood. — Katja Millay

My life spontaneously combusted... — Katja Millay

Dying really isn't so bad after you've done it once. And I have. I'm not afraid of death anymore. I'm afraid of everything else. — Katja Millay