Richard Siken Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• I’m not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better. But please, isn’t this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies?

  Richard Siken

  Degrees, Afternoon, World

  8 Copy quote

• Tell me we're dead and I'll love you even more.

  Richard Siken

  Love You

  6 Copy quote

• The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.

  Richard Siken

  Monsters, Alive, Body

  9 Copy quote

• Hello, darling. Sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.

  Richard Siken

  Sorry, Should Have, Together

  Richard Siken, “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”

  26 Copy quote

• I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars.

  Richard Siken

  Taken, Feelings, Body

  10 Copy quote

• Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.

  Richard Siken

  Dream, Writing, Glasses

  Richard Siken, “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”

  7 Copy quote

• ...you're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.

  Richard Siken

  Weed, Waiting, Together

  15 Copy quote

• The narrator blames the birds. And you want to blame the birds as well. I blamed the birds for a long time. But in this story everyone is hungry, even the birds. And at this point in the story so many things have gone wrong, so many bad decisions made, that it’s a wonder anyone would want to continue reading.

  Richard Siken

  Reading, Long, Bird

  4 Copy quote

• Imagine that the world is made out of love. Now imagine that it isn’t. Imagine a story where everything goes wrong, where everyone has their back against the wall, where everyone is in pain and acting selfishly because if they don’t, they’ll die. Imagine a story, not of good against evil, but of need against need against need, where everyone is at cross-purposes and everyone is to blame.

  Richard Siken

  Wall, Pain, Evil

  6 Copy quote

• We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with. The attempt to say Come over. Bring your friends. It’s a potluck, I’m making pork chops, I’m making those long noodles you love so much.

  Richard Siken

  Struggle, Heart, Long

  45 Copy quote

• Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

  Richard Siken

  Sorry, Boys, Blood

  5 Copy quote

• Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

  Richard Siken

  Night, Rome, Here I Am

  10 Copy quote

• Here I am in a rabbit run, here I am in a valley of pine, waiting for you to find me. I could pretend I’m speaking to everyone—assume a middle distance and transcend myself—but I’m taking to you and you know it.

  Richard Siken

  Running, Distance, Here I Am

  4 Copy quote

• This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.

  Richard Siken

  Wish, Half, Splits

  9 Copy quote

• The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.

  Richard Siken

  Light, Mystery, Passing

  13 Copy quote

• I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings/ and you say I'll give you anything but you never come through.

  Richard Siken

  Giving, Monsters, Burning

  4 Copy quote

• how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable. Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it.

  Richard Siken

  Mean, Apples, Light

  10 Copy quote

• Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again.

  Richard Siken

  Dream, Lakes, Clothes

  4 Copy quote

• I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.

  Richard Siken

  Dream, Thinking, Long

  12 Copy quote

• Vanity, in a fairy tale, will make you evil. Vanity in the real world will drive you nuts. Vanity makes you say things like “I deserved a better life than this.

  Richard Siken

  Real, Vanity, Nuts

  12 Copy quote

• We laugh & it pits the world against us.

  Richard Siken

  Laughing, Pits, World

  4 Copy quote

• Wearing your clothes or standing in the shower for over an hour, pretending that this skin is your skin, these hands your hands, these shins, these soapy flanks

  Richard Siken

  Hands, Clothes, Skins

  4 Copy quote

• If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.

  Richard Siken

  Way, If You Love Me, You Don't Love Me

  35 Copy quote

• A kid under a tablecloth insists he’s a ghost. A table underneath a tablecloth is, I guess, like the rest of us, only pretending to be invisible.

  Richard Siken

  Kids, Tables, Ghost

  4 Copy quote

• The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.

  Richard Siken

  Desire, Kind, Minutes

  Richard Siken, “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”

  4 Copy quote

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