Home > Author > Danya Kukafka
1 " But Saffy knew about catastrophe. It was arbitrary. A thing descended from nowhere, pointed a bony finger, and smirked. As if to say: I choose you. "
― Danya Kukafka , Notes on an Execution
2 " You are a fingerprint. When you open your eyes on the last day of your life, you see your own thumb. In the jaundiced prison light, the lines on the pad of your thumb look like a dried-out riverbed, like sand washed into twirling patterns by water, once there and now gone. "
3 " You don't need to have it all. You only need to figure out how much is enough. "
4 " Grief was a hole. A portal to nothing. Grief was a walk so long Hazel forgot her own legs. It was a shock of blinding sun. A burst of remembering: sandals on pavement, a sleepy back seat, nails painted on the bathroom floor. Greif was a loneliness that felt like a planet. "
5 " No one is all bad. No one is all good. We live as equals in the murky gray between. "
6 " Nostalgia is my favorite emotion. It's like, you think you know how to deal with the passage of time, but nostalgia will prove you wrong. You'll press your face into an old sweatshirt, or you'll look at a familiar shade of paint on a front door, and you'll be reminded of all the time that got away from you. If you could live it all again, you'd take a long moment to look around, to examine knees against knees. Nostalgia puts you in this dangerous re-creation of something you can never have again. It's ruthless, and for the most part, inaccurate. "
― Danya Kukafka , Girl in Snow
7 " Pity is destruction wearing a mask of sympathy. "
8 " She had known from a young age that everyone had darkness inside-some just controlled it better than others. Very few people believed that they were bad, and this was the scariest part. Human nature could be so hideous, but it persisted in this ugliness by insisting it was good. "
9 " It's almost funny: you think you matter to someone. They're the center of your universe, the sun you revolve around. You'd give anything for their details. You inch closer, closer, with tentative steps. You can walk as far as you want, but it won't matter. You are not even on their map. "
― Danya Kukafka
10 " Give yourself a moment every day, Harmony had suggested once in group therapy. A single moment in which you are absolved of all responsibility. How much responsibility could a person hold, Lavender wondered. How much, before the overflow? "
11 " ...and she thought how sad it was that a single bad thing could turn you into a story, a matter to be whispered about. Tragedy was undiscerning and totally unfair. "
12 " Forgiveness is flimsy. Forgiveness is like a square of warm sun on the carpet. You’d like to curl up in it, feel it’s temporary comfort, but forgiveness will not change you. Forgiveness will not bring you back. "
13 " Lucinda was dead, and the reminder slapped him constantly, freezing ocean waves against his thighs. He could only wade deeper. Deeper, until the truth bubbled into his mouth, salty, miserable. Deeper, until it was pointless to search for shorelines because he knew Lucinda would not be standing on them. "
14 " On his wedding night, Russ thought of Lee Whitley in the way you think of someone dead. Fondly, too fondly, until absence takes this fondness and multiplies it, stretching until it becomes something invasive. Until it swallows you whole. "
15 " Felix Culpa, her mother had written. The happy fault. The horrible thing that leads to the good. "
16 " Grief was a hole. A portal to nothing. Grief was a walk so long Hazel forgot her own legs. It was a shock of blinding sun. A burst of remembering: sandals on pavement, a sleepy back seat, nails painted on the bathroom floor. Grief was a loneliness that felt like a planet. "
17 " She had created two living beings. Eventually, they would be people. Lavender hoped that the mystery of their futures held exactly this: gritty sand, goose-bumped arms, waves breaking over their freckled shoulders. She remembered the bedroom window in the farmhouse, that tease of a breeze. They had it now. If nothing else, Lavender had given them the gift of possibility. Her boys could touch it with their hands, the wide expanse of the world. "
18 " Good and evil are simply stories that we tell ourselves, narratives we’ve created to justify being alive. No person is wholly good, and no person wholly evil. "
19 " Sometimes you are certain this is all you are made of: a fleeting instant between action and inaction. Doing something, or not. Where is the difference, you wonder? Where is the choice. Where is the line, between stillness and motion? "
20 " Every second is a year. Every second is your failure, every second is your lifeline. Every second goes to waste. "
