1.
You send me all these roses. Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up. I’m running out of vases. I didn’t know roses came in so many colors. You say they’re the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain. I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. And you don’t get it. You say you love me, but you don’t speak my language. You don’t even realize I’m an orchid girl.
Erin Morgenstern
2.
This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it.
Erin Morgenstern
3.
I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held.
Erin Morgenstern
4.
I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.
Erin Morgenstern
5.
I have absurdly vivid dreams.
Erin Morgenstern
6.
Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.
Erin Morgenstern
7.
The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones.
Erin Morgenstern
8.
Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.
Erin Morgenstern
9.
People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.
Erin Morgenstern
10.
Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.
Erin Morgenstern
11.
Tarot is just stories on cards.
Erin Morgenstern
12.
Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright.
Erin Morgenstern
13.
The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.
Erin Morgenstern
14.
Love is fickle and fleeting," Tsukiko continues. "It is rarely a solid foundation for decisions to be made upon, in any game.
Erin Morgenstern
15.
I don't think there's anything wrong being a dreamer.
Erin Morgenstern
16.
I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.' 'But you built me dreams instead.
Erin Morgenstern
17.
Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.
Erin Morgenstern
18.
The rain increases and umbrellas sprout like mushrooms amongst the graves.
Erin Morgenstern
19.
Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.
Erin Morgenstern
20.
At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern.
After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the clouds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes.
By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.
Erin Morgenstern
21.
The silence that falls between them is a comfortable one. He longs to reach over and touch her, but he resists, fearful of destroying the delicate camaraderie they are building. He steals glances instead, watching the way the light falls over her skin. Several times he catches her regarding him in a similar manner, and the moments when she holds his eyes with hers are sublime.
Erin Morgenstern
22.
I have tried to let you go and I cannot. I cannot stop thinking of you. I cannot stop dreaming about you.
Erin Morgenstern
23.
Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.
Erin Morgenstern
24.
You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.
Erin Morgenstern
25.
I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well.
Erin Morgenstern
26.
You believe you could not live with the pain. Such pain is not lived with. It is only endured. I am sorry.
Erin Morgenstern
27.
The sensation reminds him of the first snow of winter, for those first few hours when everything is blanketed in white, soft and quiet.
Erin Morgenstern
28.
Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.
Erin Morgenstern
29.
It is likely to make us think we are not caged. We cannot feel the bars unless we push against them.
Erin Morgenstern
30.
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des RĂŞves, and it is only open at night.
Erin Morgenstern
31.
Celia." he says without looking up at her, "why do we wind our watch?" "Because everything requires energy," she recites obediently, eyes still focused on her hand. "We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.
Erin Morgenstern
32.
And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister's story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead.
Erin Morgenstern
33.
You don't have to be a chef or even a particularly good cook to experience proper kitchen alchemy: the moment when ingredients combine to form something more delectable than the sum of their parts.
Erin Morgenstern
34.
The circus arrives without warning.
Erin Morgenstern
35.
It’s said that All Hallows’ Eve is one of the nights when the veil between the worlds is thin - and whether you believe in such things or not, those roaming spirits probably believe in you, or at least acknowledge your existence, considering that it used to be their own. Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright.
Erin Morgenstern
36.
Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent.
Erin Morgenstern
37.
Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?
Erin Morgenstern
38.
Esse quam videri," Celia says. "To be, rather than to seem.
Erin Morgenstern
39.
Trapped in silence, Marco traces apologies and adorations across Celia's body with his tongue. Mutely expressing all the things he cannot speak aloud. He finds other ways to tell her, his fingers leaving faint trails of ink in their wake. He savors every sound he elicits from her. The entire room trembles as they come together. And though there are a great many fragile objects contained within it, nothing breaks.
Erin Morgenstern
40.
I believe you have my umbrella" he says, almost out of breath but wearing a grin that has too much wolf in it to be properly sheepish.
Erin Morgenstern
41.
I like to call it nighttime brain: the way your mind seems to function on a different frequency than it does during daylight hours - which can be good or bad but also can lead to unexpected epiphanies or experiences that wouldn't be the same at any other time of day.
Erin Morgenstern
42.
The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.
Erin Morgenstern
43.
I think looking forward will be better than looking back.
Erin Morgenstern
44.
They say it's darkest before the dawn, but it also tend to be quietest, and the quiet lets you hear yourself better.
Erin Morgenstern
45.
I couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real.
Erin Morgenstern
46.
I saw in details while she saw in scope. Not seeing the scope is why I am here and she is not. I took each element spearately and never looked to see that they never did fit together properly
Erin Morgenstern
47.
Is it not that bad to be trapped somewhere, then? Depending on where you're trapped?" "I suppose it depends on how much you like the place you're trapped in," Widget says. "And how much you like whoever you're stuck there with," Poppet adds, kicking his black boot with her white one.
Erin Morgenstern
48.
I have read for countless people on innumerable subjects and the most difficult thing to understand within the cards is always the timing. I knew that, and still it surprised me. How long I was willing to wait for something that was only a possibility. I always thought it was just a matter of time but I was wrong.
Erin Morgenstern
49.
The most difficult thing to read is time. Maybe because it changes so many things.
Erin Morgenstern
50.
Celia, wait,” Marco says, standing but not moving closer to her. “You are breaking my heart. You told me once that I reminded you of your father. That you never wanted to suffer the way your mother did for him, but you are doing exactly that to me. You keep leaving me. You leave me longing for you again and again when I would give anything for you to stay, and it is killing me.” “It has to kill one of us,” Celia says quietly.
Erin Morgenstern