Quotes from Richard Siken

You're trying not to tell him you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for.

I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me and I have to search my body for scars.

Oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.

Here I am leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

Moonlight making crosses on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.

You wanted happiness, I can't blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you're not miserable.

And the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it.

We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars as the road around us grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through the glass already laced with frost, but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of lullabies. But damn if there isn't anything sexier than a slender boy with a handgun, a fast car, a bottle of pills.

We laugh & it pits the world against us.

Okay, so I'm the dragon. Big deal. You still get to be the hero.

The way you slam your body into mine reminds me I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.

We pull our boots on with both hands but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine. I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

The light is no mystery, the mystery is that there is something to keep the light from passing through.

You play along, because you want to die for love, you always have.

History repeats itself. Someone says this. History throws its shadow over beginning, over the desktop, over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters. history is the little man in a brown suit trying to define a room he is outside of, I know history. There are many names in history... but none of them are ours.

You wanted to think of yourself as someone who did these kinds of things. You wanted to be in love and he happened to get in the way.

I'm not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better. But please, isn't this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies?

Fairy tales have rules. You are a princess or you aren't. You are pure at heart or you aren't. If you are pure at heart, or lucky, you might catch a break.

Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again.

He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. There's a niche in his chest where a heart would fit perfectly and he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place – well then, game over.

Vanity, in a fairy tale, will make you evil. Vanity in the real world will drive you nuts. Vanity makes you say things like "I deserved a better life than this.

This is where the evening splits in half, Henry, love or death. Grab an end, pull hard, and make a wish.

I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. I'd rather quit. I'd rather be sad. It's too much work.