Home > Author > Cassandra Khaw
1 " You can’t murder that which is eternal, that which will lie until death itself passes. But you can slow it, cripple it, hobble it.You can hurt your nightmares; it’s a two-way street. "
― Cassandra Khaw , A Song for Quiet (Persons Non Grata, #2)
2 " He told me—it was like a dream.” The story unspools in chunks and gasps, wet noises caked with pain. “He told me, he— this was supposed to be beautiful. Like being reborn. Like giving birth. Like creating life. But this is—”“Wrong.” I finish.“It hurts. "
― Cassandra Khaw , Hammers on Bone (Persons Non Grata, #1)
3 " The world is made up of rituals. From the way you brush your teeth to how you show obeisance during religious ceremonies, it’s an endless list of interlocking behaviours seared into your unconscious self, charms against the madness of reality. "
― Cassandra Khaw , Food of the Gods
4 " But the interior didn't smell like it'd had people here, not for a long, long time, and smelled instead like such old buildings do: green and damp and dark and hungry, hollow as a stomach that'd forgotten what it was like to eat. "
― Cassandra Khaw , Nothing But Blackened Teeth
5 " After all, isn't that the foremost commandment in the scripture of horror? They who are queer, deviant, tattooed, tongue-pierced or other must always die first "
6 " One of the most effective tricks in a gumshoe's playbook is the act of silence. Wait. Let the other guy pull the trigger first. It costs you nothing, and it gets you everything. "
7 " Every religion is a one-way relationship. "
8 " And for one infinitesimally brief moment, the universe peels open, and I can see everything—how physics and velocity and time intersects with the idea of a heaven above, how meta co-exist with the fundamental truth of their non-existence, how the sun can be a star can be a ball of dung rolled across the galaxy by a gargantuan beetle. Suddenly, it is all so clear. "
9 " Blues is about wanting and not having, about putting that need into someone else's hands for a little while so you can pause and breathe. "
10 " The world’s too full of trouble to adopt those that don’t belong to you. "
11 " Have you ever cannonballed into a cold lake? The shock of an old memory is kind of like that; every neuron singing a bright hosanna: here we are. You forgot about us, but we didn’t forget about you. "
12 " Every child knows they’re going to outlive their parents, but understanding is no opiate, can only mitigate. Knowledge can only propagate a trust that someday this will be okay. But not yet, not yet. "
13 " This is the problem with horror movies: Everyone knows what's coming next but actions have momentum, every decision an equal and justified reaction. Just because you know you should, doesn't mean that you can, stop. "
14 " A decade of friendship teaches you a lot of things: the tics that separate I’m sorry and I’m sorry you caught me, that hangdog expression that is really code for when the other person’s expecting you to fix their mess. "
15 " What do you do when the funeral is over but your heart is still broken. When all the condolences have been spoken and the mourners have gone shuffling home, and you’re left to stare at the wall, so raw and empty that you don’t know if you’ll ever be whole again. "
16 " Human is very similar to pork, after all. "
17 " I said I was sorry, ” he barks, as though that one word is a confessional to be stuffed full with his sins. As though that one word could absolve everything. "
― Cassandra Khaw , These Deathless Bones
18 " The court at large paid no mind to the little prince’s eccentricities, lauding them as portents of glories to come. In battle, the soothsayers exulted, he’d be a monster.Funny how they wouldn’t talk about how he was one already. "
19 " Like any other subordinate of the hell, I've died a few times. Knife wound, explosions, minotaur-related disagreements, voluntary and incredibly athletic decisions to stop my own heart. The usual. But I've never been chewed up and digested by a dragon god. Which, I guess, is a class of experience above being eaten by a garden-variety lizard. "
― Cassandra Khaw , The Last Supper Before Ragnarok
20 " Worship for salvation; the oldest bargain. "
