Quotes by Richard Siken

“Youre in a car with a beautiful boy, and he wont tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like youve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or sh...”

“Eventually something you love is going to be taken away. And then you will fall to the floor crying. And then, however much later, it is finally happening to you: youre falling to the floor crying ...”

“If you love me, Henry, you dont love me in a way I understand.”

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

“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.”

“Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.”

“We pull our boots on with both handsbut we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorryabout the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.I couldn't get the boy to...”

“A man walks into a bar and says: Take my wifeplease. So you do. You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her and she leaves you and youre desolate.Youre on your back in your undersh...”

“He could build a city. Has a certain capacity. Theres a niche in his chestwhere a heart would fit perfectlyand he thinks if he could just maneuver one into place well then, game over.”

“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 yo...”

“But damn if there isn't anything sexier than a slender boy with a handgun, a fast car, a bottle of pills.”

“Here is the cake, and here is the fork, and here's the desire to put it inside us, and then the question behind every question: What happens next?”

“I know history. There are many names in historybut none of them are ours.”

“Dear Forgiveness, you know that recentlywe have had our difficulties and there are many thingsI want to ask you.”

“I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something's not right about what I'm doing ...”

“Paint ghosts over everything, the sadness of everything. We made ourselves cold. We made ourselves snow. We smuggled ourselves into ourselves. Haunted by each others knowledge. To hide somewhere is...”

“Wanna make a monster? Take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable your weaknesses, bad thoughts, vanities, and hungers and pretend theyre across the room. Its too ugly to be human. Its...”

“From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale.”

“He had green eyes, so I wanted to sleep with him. Green eyes flecked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool. You could drown in those eyes, I said. The fact of his pulse, the way he pul...”

“Theres a dream in thespace between the hammer and the nail: the dream ofabout-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream, but the nail willtake the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever.”