201 Quotes by Nicola Griffith

We never spoke of it but we knew that to come within the orbit of each other’s skin-scent and cellular hum could end only one way: falling helplessly, spectacularly into the other’s gravity well, momentarily brilliant like all falling stars, but doomed, because I loved Rose. And this friendship was too precious to burn.

Love wasn’t a state change. Romance might be, and lust, and like, but they were just the preconditions. Love was the choice you made; day in, day out.

Not knowing the right definitions is no different from not having the right tools to fix a burst water pipe.

She could become anyone she wishes. But how will she know she is still herself?

The cloud cover was heavy and multilayered, shades of slate blue and silver, pearl and charcoal, like a sketch washed with watercolour.

She wondered why modern creations became uglier faster.

The world lit up like a silent photograph, flat and grainy, limning the tree stark as a charcoal slash against a parchment sky. Lightning exploded like bluewhite cats-o’-nine-tails until sound rolled and cracked and splintered and Marghe could no longer tell if it was the ground shaking or her muscles; she felt deaf and blind and exposed to her core.

Older people were immigrants in their own country. They had not been born to the idea of rapid change, not like us.

That’s what I wanted from the world, to feel nothing. To feel nothing and not be involved, for everything to stay comfortably outside myself and not get in. How did people survive all this knowledge of suffering in the world? How did they carry it around, day after day, and not go mad?