Home > Author > Dessa
1 " These hours are numbered, I can't afford to waste any in transit. "
― Dessa , My Own Devices: Essays From the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love
2 " My mind, which I used to consider a great ally, has turned into a sparrow on a leash. "
― Dessa , Spiral Bound
3 " Loneliness is the fare that you pay to be free. "
4 " I don't believe in fate or destiny or that everything turns out for the best. I'll concede that everything happens for a reason but only as a very general statement of causation. Some lousy things happen for really lousy reasons. "
5 " It’s impossible to know which moments are crucial to your narrative until the story is over. "
6 " Every breath is borrowed by the lungful; you can’t save them for later or hold a single one for long. And even a chestful of air is too much cargo for some trips. Some places you have to go empty. "
7 " There is some mercy after all in our design:a soft amnesia for the frequently mistreated,an adrenal surge for the cornered and outnumbered,a flash of light for the very nearly dead. "
8 " There’s no best-practice handbook for the pursuit of unlikely dreams. "
9 " In high school, the hardest years, she salted her bath water. "
10 " But that trick—getting people to like you a little bit right away—is not achieved simply by administering a small dose of the same magic that could get them to love you for a lifetime. They are different compounds entirely. Charisma is an excellent attractant, but lousy glue. "
11 " What if brain is to mind as hand is to fist? Like, maybe the mind is something that the brain can make of itself, a posture it can hold. We have a lap when we sit down, but not when we stand—even though we always have legs. We always have a brain but only have a mind when we’re conscious or dreaming, and not when we’re in surgery or dead. "
12 " Free will is just the ghost we strap into the machine when the manual gets confusing. "
13 " Sometimes it felt like we were forged out of something more durable than love—or maybe loyalty is just love fossilized. "
14 " X and I were only good at the feeling of love, not the behavior. Which is like knowing how to dive, but not how to swim. "
15 " My mother says I've loved too many menBut I took and left something in every bed . . . It's a myth; we're all swinging for the lifeboats. I didn't come looking for love, I didn't come to fight. I come here to work and you can grab an ax, man, or step aside . . . "
― Dessa
16 " Water is the key to life, man. "
17 " I’d learn there was a word for those moods, and that they often linked to menstrual cycles. "
