The collection / 32 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

32 results · Page 2 of 2Play this collection ▷

01c. 1964 AD

There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck. Some of us may be more susceptible than others are, but there's always a siren. It may be with us all our lives, or it may be many years or decades before we find it or it finds us. But when it does find us, if we're lucky we're Odysseus tied up to the ship's mast, hearing the song with perfect clarity, but ferried to safety by a crew whose ears have been plugged with beeswax. If we're not at all lucky, we're another sort of sailor stepping off the deck to drown in the sea.

Caitlín R. Kiernan / quote

02c. 1964 AD

It's a myth that crazy people don't know they're crazy. Many of us are surely as capable of epiphany and introspection as anyone else, maybe more so. I suspect we spend far more time thinking about our thoughts than do sane people.

Caitlín R. Kiernan / quote

03c. 1964 AD

I am a dead woman. Dead and insane.

Caitlín R. Kiernan / quote

04c. 1964 AD

Stop it," Chance says out loud, angryraw, scornful voice that she hardly recognizes, "Jesus, just fucking stop it," but she's crying again, and her eyes burn, and she's so goddamn sick of the sound, the smell and saltbland flavor of her own useless tears.

Caitlín R. Kiernan / quote

05c. 1964 AD

[L]uxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience. (Ancillary Justice)

Caitlín R. Kiernan / quote

06c. 1964 AD

Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways... Too often, people make the mistake of trying to use their art to capture a ghost, but only end up spreading their haunting to countless other people.

Caitlín R. Kiernan / quote

07c. 1964 AD

You love someone. You don’t leave her to drown. And you don’t tell her she’s crazier than she already knows that she is!

Caitlín R. Kiernan / quote

08c. 1964 AD

Chance wanting to defend her grandfather, but not about to leave the library, dustysafe sanctuary of shelves and glass cases and the musty smell of all the books, the door locked from the inside against birdnervous aunts who thought maybe a few slabs of smoked ham and a spoonful of mashed potatoes would make everything better, would make anything right again.

Caitlín R. Kiernan / quote