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The Electric Kingdom QUOTES

The Electric Kingdom QUOTES

1 " Sometimes Kit would look at the veins in his own hands and think, All these little rivers flowing through my body, keeping me alive. Thank you, little rivers. Thank you. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

2 " We sit there, just being together, not speaking or even looking at each other, and it feels quietly tectonic, the kind of moment that might move a mountain if it were let outside. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

3 " How to be human, it seemed, was an infinite ocean in which Kit had only yet dipped the corner of a toenail. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

4 " He'd done more than give her a story - he'd given her life inside the story. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

5 " Even in a world where Fly exterminates Human, this has not changed: that one person might find beauty in another. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

6 " But listening was about more than hearing; it was about when and where you put yourself in the story. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

7 " It occurred to her that this was true friendship: a person in your life who was willing to walk through strange doors into dark places, so long as they could walk there with you. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

8 " Morning people, as Kit understood them, belonged to a breed of humans who derived unending joy from the horrors of emerging from one's bed. . . .

The only thing "morning people" enjoyed more than morning was telling everyone else about it. It was a badge of honor, apparently, to be a "morning person. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

9 " Maybe instead of portals to other worlds, all we needed were portals to other times. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

10 " Strange, how a person could create something they didn’t understand. But maybe that was what made art great: Who cares where it comes from, so long as it comes from you? "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

11 " It was beauty and discord at once. Nature unleashing her global psyche. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

12 " But in a world consumed by Flies, kids were adults and adults were nowhere. How long you’d been alive only meant something when life itself wasn’t a luxury. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

13 " He would never understand how humans could be so entirely smart and so entirely stupid at the same time.

Not 50 percent one and 50 percent the other.

They were 100 percent smart and stupid. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

14 " Whenever Kit got down about being born in a world where Flies ate humans, he reminded himself that even in the world before Flies, things made little sense. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

15 " After reading a few more entries, something occurred to her. A trend. The more ambitious Lives--the ones that stretched the boundaries of their power--generally ended in trauma, disaster, or grief. Whereas those Lives who understood and respected their power were generally fulfilled. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

16 " In the olden days, there had been a breed of human known as "billionaire." To qualify, you had to have at least a billion cash bucks. One billion! But the real mind-boggler was that billionaires kept on being billionaires even when they knew there were people who had zero cash-bucks.

What a zany place this world had been. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

17 " It wasn't that Kit didn't like the old person library. It was the insinuation that a library for old people had more wisdom than a library for children.

It only took a few afternoons in the old person library for Kit to debunk this theory. (Debunk being a word he knew that meant "remove the bunk.") The stories were different, yes. Most of the covers were bigger, and some even had print so large, Kit could have read the pages from across the street. There were "books on tape" and "audiobooks," which, so far as Kit could tell, had been nothing more than very long grown-up versions of bedtime stories. But there was no more or less wisdom to be found in the old person library. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

18 " I have asked the stars many questions. This is the first time they've answered. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

19 " You'll be like me, a pitiful little knot in the floorboard that no one even knows exists. Kit brushed his hand against the grainy wood. I see you, he thought. I know you exist "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom

20 " We're still here. "

― David Arnold , The Electric Kingdom