I'm kind of big on performance in general. I like the sort of entertainment where you can go in and be fully immersed in it.
Erin MorgensternThey say it's darkest before the dawn, but it also tend to be quietest, and the quiet lets you hear yourself better.
Erin MorgensternMarco moves to close the distance between them, kissing away her tears before catching her lip with his own. As he kisses her, the bonfire glows brighter. The acrobats catch the light perfectly as they spin. The entire circus sparkles, dazzling every patron.
Erin MorgensternThe fact that people are already reading and loving something I wrote is still hard to believe.
Erin MorgensternMost maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.
Erin MorgensternSting told me if I love somebody I should set them free. I doubt Sting ever loved anyone with wings. If he did he might rethink such a stupid sentiment. I suppose the point is to wait for your love to come back to you voluntarily. I wonder if thereโs a difference between setting something free and letting it go? I probably did it wrong. I should stop taking advice from my radio. I worry that youโre lost. I keep a heart-shaped cage unlocked for you, out on the street where it can easily be seen. So if one day you return at least youโll have a place to stay.
Erin MorgensternI didn't know your identity, but I had an impression of who my opponent was, being surrounded by things you made.
Erin MorgensternI keep waiting for things to get back down to whelming, but they stay at overwhelming.
Erin MorgensternโNothing's impossible,โ Poppet responds. She smiles at him and jumps, her red hair trailing out behind her as she falls.
Erin MorgensternIt is a matter of perspective, the difference between opponent and partner," Tsukiko says. "You step to the side and the same person can be either or both or something else entirely. It is difficult to know which face is true.
Erin MorgensternI believe you have my umbrella" he says, almost out of breath but wearing a grin that has too much wolf in it to be properly sheepish.
Erin MorgensternThe past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on your fingers. Some people can get rid of it but itโs still there, the events and things that pushed you to where you are now.
Erin MorgensternIt's a wonderful sort of feeling when people want to spend more time in a world you created.
Erin MorgensternCelia." he says without looking up at her, "why do we wind our watch?" "Because everything requires energy," she recites obediently, eyes still focused on her hand. "We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.
Erin MorgensternWhich tent is your favourite?" he asks. "The Ice Garden," Celia answers, without even pausing to consider. "Why is that?" Marco asks. "Because of the way it feels," she says. "It's like walking into a dream. As though it is someplace else entirely and not simply another tent.
Erin MorgensternI paint very messy. I throw paint around. So when I let myself do the same sort of thing with my writing, and I would just write and write and write and revise, that's when I found my rhythm in writing.
Erin MorgensternWidge can see the past." Poppet says suddenly. "That's why his stories are so good." "The past is easier," Widget says. "It's already there." "In the stars?" Bailey asks. "No." Widget says. "On people. The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on fingers. Some people can get rid of it but it's still there, the events and t hings that pushed you to where you are now.
Erin MorgensternTrapped in silence, Marco traces apologies and adorations across Celia's body with his tongue. Mutely expressing all the things he cannot speak aloud. He finds other ways to tell her, his fingers leaving faint trails of ink in their wake. He savors every sound he elicits from her. The entire room trembles as they come together. And though there are a great many fragile objects contained within it, nothing breaks.
Erin MorgensternI don;t think there's anything wrong with being a dreamer. There is not. But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.
Erin MorgensternIs 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 MorgensternSo proper for a circus girl," Mme. Padva says with with a gleam in her eye. "We shall have to loosen those corset laces if we intend to keep you an intimate dinner company." "I expected the corset unlacing would take place after dinner," Celia says mildly, earning a chorus of laughter. "We shall keep Miss Bowen as intimate company regardless of the state of her corset," Chandresh says. "Make a note of that," he adds, waving a hand at Marco. "Miss Bowen's corset is duly noted, sir," Marco replies, and the laghter bubbles over the table again.
Erin MorgensternOur instructors do not understand how it is. To be bound to someone in such a way. They are too old, too out of touch with their emotions. They no longer remember what it is to live and breathe within the world. They think it simple to pit any two people against each other. It is never simple. The other person becomes how you define your life, how you define yourself. They become as necessary as breathing. Then they expect the victor to continue on without that. It would be like pulling the Murray twins apart and expecting them to be the same. They would be whole but not complete.
Erin MorgensternLife takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.
Erin MorgensternAnd there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister's story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead.
Erin MorgensternYou think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Rรชves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus. You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.
Erin MorgensternI thought a circus environment would be an interesting venue to explore, where you didn't just have one tent with three rings and a show going on but where you could explore different things in different tents.
Erin MorgensternWhere do you get your ideas? people ask. Sometimes theyโre at the bottoms of cups of tea. Sometimes theyโre lurking in my shower. Sometimes theyโre waiting patiently in glass cases in museums.
Erin MorgensternThe circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rรชves, and it is only open at night.
Erin MorgensternYou don't have to be a chef or even a particularly good cook to experience proper kitchen alchemy: the moment when ingredients combine to form something more delectable than the sum of their parts.
Erin MorgensternI worry hope will crush me, the way love has so many times before. Are they so different, hope and love? O & E in the same place, half of the other in each word. Both swimming in unknowns. Iโve been through the big changes. These ones should seem easier in comparison, I should be more prepared, but they donโt and Iโm not. Sometimes I feel like a broken-wing butterfly, clinging to a window screen. Afraid to let go. Afraid to stay. Wondering how much wing is enough to fly.
Erin MorgensternThere is a movement happening, a quiet one. A low-profile, low-resolution revolution. Comprised of writers and dreamers, of guerrilla artists and thought-ninjas. Those with something to say. They communicate through text inscribed on true public spaces, rather than blogs and forums. Choosing fewer words, even without being bound by 140 character limits. Using ink instead of pixels. Sending messages in living, breathing space. Pens scream louder into the void. Even if permanent ink is not aptly named.
Erin MorgensternHe reads histories and mythologies and fairy tales, wondering why it seems that only girls are ever swept away from their mundane lives on farms by knights or princes or wolves. It strikes him as unfair to not have the same fanciful opportunity himself. And he is not in the position to do any rescuing of his own.
Erin MorgensternGrow up, Bailey." "That is precisely what I'm doing," Bailey says. "I don't care if you don't understand that. Staying here won't make me happy. It will make you happy because you're insipid and boring, and an insipid, boring life is enough for you. It's not enough for me. It will never be enough for me. So I'm leaving. Do me a favor and marry someone who will take decent care of the sheep.
Erin MorgensternI like to call it nighttime brain: the way your mind seems to function on a different frequency than it does during daylight hours - which can be good or bad but also can lead to unexpected epiphanies or experiences that wouldn't be the same at any other time of day.
Erin MorgensternIt's too late. It was too late by the time I arrived in London to turn your notebook into a dove; there were too many people already involved. Anything either of us does has an effect on everyone here, on every patron who walks through those gates. Hundreds if not thousands of people. All flies in a spiderweb that was spun when I was six years old and now I can barely move for fear of losing someone else.
Erin MorgensternIt is likely to make us think we are not caged. We cannot feel the bars unless we push against them.
Erin MorgensternThe boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies out sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that become intimately familiar beneath his ink-stained fingers, formed again and again in increasingly steady lines.
Erin MorgensternDo you remember all of your audiences?" Marco asks. "Not all of them," Celia says. "But I remember the people who look at me the way you do." "What way might that be?" "As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me." " I am not afraid of you," Marco says.
Erin Morgenstern