Stephanie Kuehn Quotes & Sayings

Maybe there were times when suicide made sense. When the immoral choice is moral. Emerson could believe that. But his father was no Walter White. He hadn't been terminally ill or struggling with addiction or living a dual life where he'd accrued huge gambling debts that he couldn't pay off. There'd been no sacrifice in his actions. Only weakness. And his pain, however deep it had been, hadn't disappeared with his death. He'd simply passed it on to those who'd loved him. That's what really got to Emerson. The selfishness of it all. — Stephanie Kuehn

I'm trying to reach the stars. — Stephanie Kuehn

There are some dreams you do wake up from, only to find you can't remember them at all. But that doesn't mean these dreams don't matter ...
These are dream that hold our most private of truths.
These are the dreams that destinies are made of. — Stephanie Kuehn

Choosing to live can mean so much more than not dying. — Stephanie Kuehn

There are some dreams you can't wake up from.
Ever.
These are called nightmares. — Stephanie Kuehn

No guardrails stood between the road and oblivion. — Stephanie Kuehn

What she had, and what Miles would because of her, why that was the point of it all. Wasn't that a brilliant thing? She'd had her shine. And now, somewhere, somehow, for a heart she'd never know, to light a sky she'd never see, someone else was preparing for theirs. — Stephanie Kuehn

That's the thing about after, Sadie. It's still happening, and there's no one answer to what you want to know. I'm living after. Every second. Every minute. Every day. But I'm living, and there's that. So here are a few of my immediate afters. Moments I'm not proud of: After... I wanted to die. I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to kill you. Clearly, I didn't do any of those things, although I can see how for someone else, it would be easy to get stuck in one of those afters and not let go. But I moved on, because that's who I am. I realize this now, and I'm starting to be okay with it. For one, I'm a pacifist. I'm also afraid of death. But more than anything, what keeps me here on this earth and lets me live with my failures is the knowledge that I am a lamb among wolves. I am not you. — Stephanie Kuehn

She loves us all."
"Then why doesn't she act like it?"
"Because love doesn't always look nice. — Stephanie Kuehn

Somewhere. somehow, in the near future, Miles knew, some of them would be winners, some losers, and others, like himself, would be asked to fall on their swords. — Stephanie Kuehn

They had it all wrong, of course. Bravery wasn't required to conquer fear. Indifference was. — Stephanie Kuehn

Hurting people wasn't all that different, though. That was also a form of taking and she did it all the time. Sometimes she wished she didn't. Sometimes the things she took were unforgivable and she'd give anything to have better control over herself. Then again, sometimes Sadie was bored. And oftentimes, that was more than enough. — Stephanie Kuehn

Real crazy is about taking something good and spoiling it. — Stephanie Kuehn

The most dangerous lie in America isn't a political one," he'd told her, as he stood by the plate glass window, gazing down at the frigid Helsinki skyline. "It's the lie that who we are is some fixed self-determined truth. That there's some absolute us-ness in our character that's unchangeable and real, and that we have an obligation to be true to this us-ness, no matter the cost. As if who we are could exist in the absence of other people. We're no more eternal than a single star, Sadie. Remember that. We shine. We burn out. But together, we can light the sky. — Stephanie Kuehn

She is fucking beautiful, and she is utter madness. — Stephanie Kuehn

You're like my sun in winter. — Stephanie Kuehn

But maybe he'd always known. Maybe the cool winds of fate and the flag-snap flutter of destiny had always been there, tickling his spine, whispering in his ear it's gonna catch up with you boy one of these days the truth'll come back so you'd better go go go, until finally, Emerson couldn't help but listen. There was only so much ruin the mind could rationalize. There was only so much badness that could be suppressed for so long. His guilt, on its own, was utterly meaningless - just a showy type of magic that changed nothing because changing nothing was the endgame all along. Words like absolution and forgiveness and redemption would never apply to someone like him. Those terms were just abstractions. Names for what other people called the moments between darkness. — Stephanie Kuehn

From what I can tell, morality is a word. Nothing more. There're the things people do when others are watching and the things we do when they aren't. — Stephanie Kuehn

...More than looking, what we're really doing is gazing, and we do it for so long I start to get the feeling that nothing else matters.
It's a good feeling.
Better than good.
It's one I could get lost in. — Stephanie Kuehn

That felt meaningful somehow, like the words on the pages ached for him to know their sorrow. — Stephanie Kuehn

I am both ever evolving and ever decaying. — Stephanie Kuehn

Race wasn't even something he thought about these days, because that's what you were supposed to do. Pretend it didn't matter. Still, — Stephanie Kuehn

No we talked about matter- most notably quarks, those tiniest possible components of everything.They come in six flavors, you know: up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange. I'll admit those talks helped me, and when i read about the sea quarks, I understood why. They contained particles of matter and antimatter, and where the two touch exists this constant stream of creation and annihilation. Scientist call this place "the sea," and it's what pitches inside of me as I hurry away from Mr. Byles, ignoring his furrowed brow, his worried frown.
I am of the sea.
I am of instability.
I am of harsh, choppy waves roiling with all the up-ness, down-ness, top-ness, bottom-ness contained within my being.
I am of charm and strange.
Annihilation.
Creation.
Annihilation. — Stephanie Kuehn

You have a history of starving yourself," he says gently.
I lift my head. I meet his gaze. "I have a history that I don't like to talk about. — Stephanie Kuehn

You wanted to live," he says.
"You say that like it's a good thing. A virtue."
"What is it really?"
I think about this. "Selfish."
"Wanting to live is selfish?"
"Yes. — Stephanie Kuehn

Even stranger, though, was how, at this very moment, this car with its echoes of death and decisions and life courses forever altered was the one place where Emerson had never felt so vividly alive. — Stephanie Kuehn

She must have seen more of my charm than my strangeness tonight. — Stephanie Kuehn

Was it possible to fall so far from greatness? Was this, then, his destiny? — Stephanie Kuehn

An ambulance came. Then a cop car.
When pressed harder about it, I cried. A lot.
Howled, really. — Stephanie Kuehn

And wasn't that him giving her permission to hurt him? It felt as if he were handing over the reins of his own suicidal impulses. That was how Sadie understood it. Of course, it was how she wanted to understand it, because to her, toying with him and offering him hope every now and then that she might actually find value in him as a human being, before pulling it all out from under him, was pure pleasure. It was everything and more. So there'd been no reason why she'd done what she'd done. There'd just been no reason not to. — Stephanie Kuehn

And yes, I say, I do like girls. I don't pursue them, though, and there are a lot of reasons for that. It's gotten me in trouble before, but I also think I have ridiculously high standards because the whole dating, fooling around thing seems so complicated. And not in a good way. I hate obligations, and if you want to be with a girl, it's like you're expected to do certain things. And do them a certain way. — Stephanie Kuehn

Because blood is blood, and every family has its own force.
Its own flavor.
Its own charm and strange. — Stephanie Kuehn

This school devours privacy, and rumors are like drops of blood in an ocean full of predators. — Stephanie Kuehn