Rachel Hartman > Quotes

“We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”
― Rachel Hartman

“Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily.”
― Rachel Hartman

“The world inside myself is vaster and richer than this paltry plane, peopled with mere galaxies and gods.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“That’s the secret to performance: conviction. The right note played tentatively still misses its mark, but play boldly and no one will question you. If one believes there is truth in art – and I do – then it’s troubling how similar the skill of performing is to lying. Maybe lying is itself a kind of art. I think about that more than I should.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“He did not know the truth of me, yet he had perceived something true about me that no one else had ever noticed. And in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—he believed me good, believed me worth taking seriously, and his belief, for one vertigi-nous moment, made me want to be better than I was.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“For future reference: do not underestimate the seductive power of math.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“Who will kiss you? Who will rock you to sleep?" His voice was slow, drowsy.

"You never did," I said, trying to tease him. "You were more father to me than my father, but you never did that."

"Someone should. Someone should love you. I will bite him if he will not.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I mistook you for a metaphor.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“Your lies didn't stop me loving you; your truth hasn't stopped me either.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I’m attracting small children,” Orma muttered, twisting his hat in his hands. “Shoo it away, will you?”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I became the very air; I was full of stars. I was the soaring spaces between the spires of the cathedral, the solemn breath of chimneys, a whispered prayer upon the winter wind. I was silence,and I was music, one clear transcendent chord rising toward Heaven. I believed, then, that I would have risen bodily into the sky but for the anchor of his hand in my hair and his round soft perfect mouth.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“Love is not a disease...I cannot let them cut you out of me, nor her either. I will cling to my sickness, if it is a sickness. I will hold it close to me like the sun.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“He was laughing, silently, and then we were both laughing, and then something changed. It was as if I had been watching the world through oiled parchment or smoked glass, which was yanked abruptly away. Everything grew very clear and bright; the music burst forth in majesty; we stood still and the room turned around us; and there was Kiggs, right in the middle of all of it, laughing.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I barely noticed loneliness anymore; it was my normal condition, by necessity if not by nature.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“He looked up at the reddening sky and said with a self-deprecating laugh, "You put me to shame, Seraphina. Your bravery always has."

"It's not bravery; it's bullheaded bumbling."

He shook his head, staring off into the middle distance. "I know courage when I see it, and when I lack it.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“How dare the world be beautiful when I was so horrifying?”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I scrupulously hide every legitimate reason for people to hate me, and it turns out they don’t need legitimate reasons. Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“The borderlands of madness used to have much sterner signage around them than they do now.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“Music is only work when someone else makes you do it.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“Peaches and Cheese”:

The vagabond sun winks down through the trees,
While lilacs, like memories, waft on the breeze,
My friend, I was born for days such as these,
To inhale perfume,
And cut through the gloom,
And feast like a king upon peaches and cheese!
I’ll travel this wide world and go where I please,
Can’t stop my wand’ring, it’s like a disease.
My only regret as I cross the high seas:
What I leave behind,
Though I hope to find,
My own golden city of peaches and cheese!”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“Please, Orma, I’ve already gotten you in so much trouble—”

“That I can’t possibly get into more. Take it.” He wouldn’t stop glaring at me until I’d put the earring back on its cord. “You are all that’s left of Linn. Her own people won’t even say her name. I—I value your continued existence.”

I could not speak; he had pierced me to my very heart.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I was half lawyer; I always noticed the loopholes.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“The truth may not be told. Here is an acceptable lie.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“However strenuously the world pulls us apart, however long the absence, we are not changed for being dashed upon the rocks. I knew you then, I know you now, I shall know you again when you come home.”
― Rachel Hartman, Shadow Scale

“I felt lighter when I had finished, and for once emptiness was a sweet relief and a condition to be treasured.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“Maybe the world isn't really different, but I am different, and I am in the world.”
― Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road

“He looked at me again and his eyes shone in the lamplight, or with the inner light of delighted anticipation.
His enthusiasm made him beautiful.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina