Ink Blood Sister Scribe Quotes

“When you're growing up, you don't ask whether your family's good, do you? Especially if you don't know anything else. They're just your family.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“...when things are very beautiful and comfortable on the surface, it can be harder to see the ugliness underneath.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“...it's the steps themselves that make a path, instead of the other way round. We are creating even as we believe we are following.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Cold was easier to bear when you'd never been warm.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“She just wanted to take one step that belonged to her, make one move that she had independently decided to make, but at every turn it felt as if her strings were being pulled by unseen hands.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“... when the physical and emotional boundaries of one's life were small, when one had walked every inch of one's allotted space many times over, it was easy to forget ignorance and feel a sort of mastery, instead.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Joanna had always known that there was quite a lot she didn't understand about the world, about the books, about her parents and their history. But when the physical and emotional boundaries of one's life were small, when one had walked every inch of one's allotted space many times over, it was easy to forget ignorance and feel a sort of mastery, instead. This house, that path, those books, that mountain; Joanna was used to being the expert and used to the safety that came with expertise.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Being invisible is actually so uncomfortable, it's like bees are crawling inside my skin. I'm really over it.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“He'd never felt so passionately all-caps about another person as Pearl seemed to feel about Esther, and certainly no one had ever felt that way about him. He expected to be sad about this realisation and instead found that he was mostly curious. Maybe if he really did manage to get free of the Library once and for all, if he began to lead a life on his own terms, all-caps was a feeling he himself might someday find.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“But the mass itself had been so boring that even her fantasies of rescuing Jesus and giving him a tender, thorough sponge bath couldn't keep her awake.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Her whole childhood, she'd devoured stories of children with dead and missing mothers, often easier to find than stories of children whose mothers were alive and well. The absence of a mother was a promise of adventure; mothers made things too safe, too comforting. Children with mothers didn't need to look outside their homes for affirmation of their supremacy in someone's story. They didn't need to write their own protagonism.

Esther remembered Cecily complaining about this when they'd watched The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Snow White, offended by the lack of loving birth mothers and the prevalence of monstrous stepmothers. She'd squeezed Esther tight and smeared her cheek with red kisses and said, 'This evil stepmother loves you very much.' But despite Cecily's love, which Esther had never doubted, she had already identified within herself the same motherless quality that drove Ariel to shore, Cinderella to the ball, Snow White into the forest. Her motherlessness was intrinsic to her sense of self, and her sense of self was all she had these many years alone.

What would it mean if her mother was alive? Not only alive, but aware of Esther and watching out for her, passing notes through magic mirrors and protecting her from afar, her own fairy godmother. What would it mean if her mother had not died, but left her?”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“But when you were the one and only, it meant you were alone.

Nicholas had been alone all his life.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Crystals of old honey on her body's tongue, long hardened, were loosening in the warmth of her spilling blood, turning from grain to syrup, a slow sweet hum of wings unfurling from deep within her and looping outward, solid and multitudinous, the comb in her chest and the workers in her veins, and the hive all around her.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“She had done this so many times: watched a twelve-month life recede below her as she flew away from it. A year felt so long unless it was all you had.”
― Emma Törzs

“Not used to visiting the houses of commoners, awe we, Prince Nicholas?'

'I'm not a prince,' said Nicholas. 'Technically, I'm a very minor baron.'

'Excuse me, your majesty.'

'The correct honorific is my lord.'

'No,' said Esther. 'Not even as a joke.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Not used to visiting the houses of commoners, are we, Prince Nicholas?'

'I'm not a prince,' said Nicholas. 'Technically, I'm a very minor baron.'

'Excuse me, your majesty.'

'The correct honorific is my lord.'

'No,' said Esther. 'Not even as a joke.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Hey, Nicholas?' Collins said in the mirror.

'Hey, Collins?'

'It's fucking creepy when you smile to yourself like that.'

Nicholas smiled wider.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Even without understanding the words, her sister's voice hit Joanna like a hammer against glass. It was unchanged, that voice. It sounded like Joanna's childhood, sunlit and safe and gone.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“If this is the book I think it is... I'm relatively certain it's human.'

A hot, sour feeling rose in the back of Esther's throat. 'What do you mean, human?'

'I mean the thread looks like it could be a combination of hair and sinew. The glue is likely rendered collagen.' He pinched the cover between thumb and forefinger. 'The leather's probably human skin.'

'Okay,' Collins said, 'great, well, if you need me, I'll be outside screaming.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Her grief had felt so heavy and she had wanted to find somewhere to put it, a container big enough and strong enough and old enough to hold it.

She'd wanted to share it.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Are they organised?' Nicholas called to her. 'What's your system?'

'Right now they're grouped by how many estimated uses they have left,' Joanna said, glancing away from Collins. 'I reorganise them a lot, though, just for fun.'

She was aware, too late, how extremely un-fun this made her sound, but Collins saw her face and said, 'Don't worry, Nicholas is no fun, either.'

'Well, I haven't been given much of a chance, have I?' Nicholas said, carefully putting the book back in place. 'For all we know, I might be absolutely amazing at karaoke.'

'Karaoke's fun people who suck at dancing.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Good-looking blue-eyed men were usually the least trustworthy of anyone- how many times had she read of a villain with "icy blue eyes"? But Collins's eyes weren't icy at all. They were homey, soft, an old-denim blue like a pair of perfectly worn-in jeans, and they were focused on her now, full of hope. She found she didn't want to say no to him.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“So you love him because he loves you,' said Nicholas, disappointed at the lack of romance in this reply.

'That doesn't sound like a good reason to love someone?”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Stepping through the mirror was like no physical experience he'd ever had. It was like swimming if the water was made of treacle and also of outer space, sweet and airless and tugging and infinite, and dark in a way that wasn't a binary to light but rather a different state entirely, complete unto itself. The body of the darkness was sound, which was sensation: countless wings brushing against one another, countless blades of golden grass moving in an endless wind, every distant highway ever heard.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Maybe he should apologise for the version of himself that would've accepted the loss of her life and filled a pen with her blood. But how exactly did one apologise for theoretical monstrosity? He wasn't very good at apologising for things he had done.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Are you and him...'

'Nah,' said Collins, and glanced at her sidelong. 'I, um, I prefer... long hair.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Romance novels are about connection. About people who connect with one another against the odds- despite their differences, their flaws, their secrets. In a romance novel you never have to worry, you know everything will end happily.'

'Unlike real life,' Collins said. 'In real life you have to worry.'

'Exactly. That's why I used to prefer novels.'

'Used to?'

'Now I'm not so sure.'

He tilted his head. 'I've spent the last six months under a silencing spell that basically ruled out any chance I had of connecting with another person,' he said. 'Take it from me. The real thing is worth all the worry in the world.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Secrets were currency and Isabel intended to stay rich.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“Clouds looked different from above. They peaked and valleyed like a landscape, their hollows purple with unshed water, summits blazing white and pink in the last flares of the evening sun. Knolls and mesas went wispy at the edges, trailing off into the blue sky like smoke and breaking the illusion of solidity that almost made it seem the plane could put its wheels down and land.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe

“The thrum of magic filled the air; the endless sugar of a hot blue sky, the beat of a thousand gossamer wings, a wind that moved anything on earth that could be moved, which was everything.”
― Emma Törzs, Ink Blood Sister Scribe