Night Circus Quotes & Sayings

The thrill of being surrounded by something wondrous and fantastical, only magnified and focused directly at her. The feel of his skin against hers reverberates across her entire body, though his fingers remain entwined in hers. — Erin Morgenstern

The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos ... but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space. — Hunter S. Thompson

I knew that, and still it surprised me. How long I was willing to wait for something that was only a possibility. — Erin Morgenstern

My circus train pulls through the night
Full of lions and trapeze artists
I'm done with elephants and clowns
I want to run away and join the office — Mike Doughty

No beautiful, I'm not seeing anyone. I've been real focused myself. But I'm not foolish enough to let you get by. Even if I have to go through two over-protective dads," Genesis answered. "So. I've got to get back on the road, but I'll see you next weekend. Friday night eight o'clock sharp. And trust me, I won't be late." Genesis bent and kissed Curtis on his cheek. Curtis blushed terribly in front of everyone. This was so ridiculous, they had absolutely no privacy. Genesis gave him another wink before he released his hand and turned to walk up the stairs. His dads walked over to him and Ruxs handed him his suit jacket. He snatched it out his dad's hand and turned to walk out the front door. "Have fun dads." Curtis could hear Day's laugh after his comment, along with the other men, as he walked angrily up the driveway to their car. His dads had made a circus act out of a very nice moment he'd shared with a really great guy. — A.E. Via

I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.' 'But you built me dreams instead. — Erin Morgenstern

He was a windblown blossom of some two hundred pounds with freckled teeth and the mellow voice of a circus barker. He was tough, fast and he ate red meat. Nobody could push him around. He was the kind of cop who spits on his blackjack every night instead of saying his prayers. But he had humorous eyes. — Raymond Chandler

I whirled round, and there on one of those dry gravel beds, was the biggest snake I had ever seen. He was sunning himself, after the cold night, and he must have been asleep when Antonia screamed. When I turned, he was lying in long loose waves, like a letter "W." He twitched and began to coil slowly. He was not merely a big snake, I thought-he was a circus monstrosity. His abominable muscularity, his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as my leg, and looked as if millstones couldn't crush the disgusting vitality out of him. — Willa Cather

Always, from the first time he went there to see Eros and the lights, that circus have a magnet for him, that circus represent life, that circus is the beginning and the ending of the world. Every time he go there, he have the same feeling like when he see it the first night, drink coca-cola, any time is guinness time, bovril and the fireworks, a million flashing lights, gay laughter, the wide doors of theatres, the huge posters, everready batteries, rich people going into tall hotels, people going to the theatre, people sitting and standing and walking and talking and laughing and buses and cars and Galahad Esquire, in all this, standing there in the big city, in London. Oh Lord. — Samuel Selvon

I would dearly love to read the reactions, the observations of each and every person who walks through the gates of Le Cirque des Reves, to know what they see and hear and feel. To see how their experience overlaps with my own and how it differs. I have been fortunate letters with such information, to have reveurs share with me writings from journals or thoughts scribbled on scraps of paper.
We add our own stories, each visitor, each visit each night spent at the circus. I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared. -Friedrick Thiessen, 1895 — Erin Morgenstern

Magic is secreand secrets are magic... — Erin Morgenstern

When I say that she was the greatest,
I mean that she resembled a circus.

She was not brightly colored,
nor was she composed

of three rings, but
under a tent in the middle of

a starlit field
on a summer night,

you could see her
in just a t-shirt

and forget how unhappy
the elephants were. — Rob MacDonald

You with your veins full of night - you have no more place among men than an epitaph in the middle of a circus. — Emil M. Cioran

Is magic not enough to live for?" Widget asks.
"Magic," the man in the grey suit repeats, turning the word into a laugh. "This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it. Look around you," he says, waving a hand at the surrounding tables. "Not a one of them even has an inkling of the things that are possible in this world, and what's worse is that none of them would listen if you attempted to enlighten them. They want to believe that magic is nothing but clever deception, because to think it real would keep them up at night, afraid of their own existence."
"But some people can be enlightened," Widget says. — Erin Morgenstern

Could you do such things when you were a dancer?' Tara asks her, as Tsukiko pulls a leg up impossibly far over her head.
'I would have had a much busier social calendar if I could,' Mme. Padva replies with a shake of her head. — Erin Morgenstern

It is destroying me that I cannot ask you to dance. — Erin Morgenstern

I love this quote uttered by the character Widget in The Night Circus. He credits it to Herr Thiessen but knows it is a literary quote by the another author.
Wine is bottled poetry — Robert Louis Stevenson

Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink. — Erin Morgenstern

I feel 'The Night Circus' has a complete story arc in one book. I like it as a single volume. It feels complete to me, and I wouldn't want to stretch it out into something it's not. — Erin Morgenstern

they start in the ice garden, through the twins grow impatient with leisurely pace that celia prefers to take around the frozen trees. before they have traveled halfway through the space they are begging to ride the carousel instead. — Erin Morgenstern

Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself. — Erin Morgenstern

Every once in awhile you find a novel so magical that there is no escaping its spell. The Night Circus is one of these rarities - engrossing, beautifully written and utterly enchanting. If you choose to read just one novel this year, this is it — Danielle Trussoni

This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it. — Erin Morgenstern

I wanted you to have a place where you felt safe enough to cry if I could not be with you. — Erin Morgenstern

Now you know about it, and you can do whatever you want to it. — Erin Morgenstern

Is it not that bad to be trapped somewhere, then? Depending on where you're trapped?"
"I suppose it depends on how much you like the place you're trapped in," Widget says.
"And how much you like whoever you're stuck there with," Poppet adds, kicking his black boot with her white one. — Erin Morgenstern

[after guard dogs frozen mid-attack] 'How long are the dogs going to stay hanging there like that?' ask Yulia. 'I want to make friends with them. Otherwise, i'll be left with a latent psychological complex that's bound to affect my personality and sexual preferences. — Sergei Lukyanenko

Precarious, life is. A flying leap. A sweep of hand. A star flung across the night. A lucky catch in this whirling juggling circus act.
From Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars — Rivera Sun

It is a matter of perspective, between opponent and partner ... You step to the side and the same person can be either or both or something else entirely. — Erin Morgenstern

He wants to know everything about her.
How she spends her time when not performing.
How she interacts with her audiences.
How she takes her tea. — Erin Morgenstern

In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the Children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream. And it might be that a sick child threw despair into the hearts of twenty families, of a hundred people; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred people quiet and awestruck trough the night and filled a hundred people with the birth-joy in the morning ... Every night a world created, complete with furniture- friends made and enemies established; a world complete with braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men, with humble men, with kindly men. Every night relationships that make a world, established; and every morning the world torn down like a circus. — John Steinbeck

The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold. — Erin Morgenstern

If I'd known how wrong I was - if I'd had any idea of the awful night that lay ahead - I'd have run after him and never returned to that disgusting circus of blood, that revolting circus of death. — Darren Shan

It almost contradicts itself," she says after a moment. "It's as if there is love and loss at the same time, together in a kind of beautiful pain. — Eric Morgenstern