Nick Lake Quotes

“When you keep hurting someone, you do one of three things. Either you fill them up with hate, and they destroy everything around them. Or you fill them up with sadness, and they destroy themselves. Or you fill them up with justice, and they try to destroy everything that's bad and cruel in this world. Me, I was the first kind of person.”

— Nick Lake

It's like she had a soul that was much too big for her; it filled her to the brim till there was no more space, so it flowed out through her eyes.

— Nick Lake

“I'm here to tell you that if you get broken, it's possible to put yourself back together. I'm here to tell you that if you get lost, it's possible that a light will come, dancing, on the horizon, to lead you home.”

— Nick Lake

In darkness, I count my blessings like Manman taught me.
One: I am alive.
Two: there is no two.

— Nick Lake

“He held his head, and he cried for them, and he did not melt into the sea but sat, aching, in the glowing moonlight-for in the end our bodies know only how to carry on surviving.
That is our strength, and our tragedy.”

— Nick Lake

“Think of this as the most screwed-up love letter ever.”

— Nick Lake

“One could call a master a good master because he did not whip his slaves, but ultimately he was still and owner of men, and men were not made to be owned.”

— Nick Lake

“I know for an absolute honest-to-goodness fact that life can kick you to pieces, break you into a thousand little shards, and that you can get up again and mend yourself. I promise.”

— Nick Lake

“This is the thing: people think that magic doesn't exist, but it does, all the time. We use spells every day: the spell of forgiveness, the spell of thanks.”

— Nick Lake

In point of fact, he was not afraid to die, not anymore. He now understood with a faith that he had never before possessed that he would see those he had lost when he died, that everything would be made whole, that he would talk to Boukman, and his mother and father and sister, again. It was true that there was no need on earth that could not be slaked and satisfied. When you are thirsty there is water. When you are hungry there is food. It is impossible to need a thing without that thing being available for the having. A man may want a green horse that flies, but he canot need one, for there is no such thing.
At this precise moment, Toussaint felt that he needed Boukman, that he could not bear it if he never saw him again, and he knew, because this need existed, that it would be met.

— Nick Lake

“There are things that, when they break, they keep on functioning, just in some other, lesser way. Like an elevator: it breaks, and it's a room. An escalator: it breaks, and it's stairs
The heart is the same.
It breaks, and you might not even notice, because you still feel things, you still have emotions.
But there's a dimension missing, like for the elevator; it still works as a room, but it has lost its vertical axis of motion, and it's the same with a heart: it breaks, and yeah, you can still have feelings, you can still feel sorry for someone, or angry, or sad, but there's something that's lost, a motion, a dimension. It breaks, and it's just an organ, beating.”

— Nick Lake

“He owns them more completely than if he had seized their balls in his hands”

— Nick Lake

“Because things might be meant to happen.
Because an order might exits, under the chaos.
Because the universe might be playing a tune.”

— Nick Lake

“What is with people who don't read novels? I mean, what kind of life is that?”

— Nick Lake

I mean, she was just cool, you know? And she didn't even mean to be. She was just a hundred-watt lightbulb in a world of forty-watt bulbs. She shone.

— Nick Lake

“I'm going to be hit by a car in about four hours, but I don't know that yet. The weird thing is, it's not the car that's going to kill me, that's going to erase me from the world. It's something totally different. Something that happens eight days from now and threatens to end everything. My name is Shelby Jane Cooper-is, was, whatever. I'm seventeen years old when the car crash happens. This is my story.”

— Nick Lake

“It is easier to trick with charm than with aggression.”

— Nick Lake

“But here's the thing:
The something new, it isn't necessarily bad. In fact, in some ways, maybe it's better.”

— Nick Lake

“Hi, I said, IN SCINTILLATING DIALOGUE REMINISCENT OF THE CLASSIC MOVIE CASABLANCA.”

— Nick Lake

“She took away my yesterdays. But that's OK. Because now I am a person made of tomorrows.”

— Nick Lake

“People think hermit crabs are cute, but I can't think of anything creepier. Some dead thing's shell, with legs poking out of it. Scuttling. Feeding on corpses. Living in a borrowed skin of death.”

— Nick Lake