SENTENCE Â STARTERS : Â ALONEÂ WITHÂ YOUÂ INÂ THEÂ ETHERÂ BYÂ OLIVIE BLAKEÂ
â they see you closer than you are, but youâre further from reach than either you or they can imagine. â
â what are you thinking about today? â
â maybe tomorrow, everything would be different. â
â take me home, stranger. â
â maybe we should break up. â
â youâre one of those brainy fucks, right? â
â your future self will always see what your present self is blind to. â
â cigarettes are extremely out of fashion. and theyâre bad for you. â
â youâre obviously a very good liar, â
â if i were a liar, wouldnât my lies be extremely valuable currency to me? â
â i donât think weâre really capable of loving the things our parents love. â
â can you make this less like an interview, please? â
â the point is, youâre observing me too closely. â
â i was formerly a thief. â
â did you get the lies you came for? â
â you want to puzzle me out like a math problem. â
â crime doesnât make a person complex, everyone has a history. â
â do you want me to leave you alone? â
â i want to see what you see. â
â are you interested in me? â
â iâm not trying to predict you. iâm trying to understand you. â
â couldnât you predict me if you understood me? â
â i like it, your brain. â
â right, one impossibility at a time. â
â i wasnât really thinking about you, to be honest. â
â itâs very⊠austere, isnât it? â
â i could study you for a lifetime, carrying all of your peculiarities and discretions in the webs of my spidery palms, and still feel empty-handed. â
â donât hold hands with anyone ever again. âÂ
â there she is. queen of chaos. â Â
â donât worry, youâll fit perfectly. donât worry, thereâs nothing here for you to break. â
â there, now it looks like somebody cares about you. â
â there is nothing worse than being predictable. nothing smaller than feeling ordinary. â
â so donât speak. just stay here with me, just breathe. â
â havenât you been paying enough attention to run? â
â donât go, just stay. settle over me like the tide, cover me like a blanket, wrap around me like the sun.â
â i think that, for someone to get close to you, you must have to give them one key at a time. and even then, only one level can be opened at once. â
â you know, itâs poor form to accuse a lady of lying all the time.â
â do you imagine things? Is your life a dream or a chart? â
â come closer, letâs see what happens, letâs see how the stars shine on your skin. â
â i know youâre not stupid. thatâs the worst part. â
â all this time weâve been talking and youâve been syncopating your breath to mine and your pulse to mine and your thoughts to my thoughts, youâve been learning how to love me, havenât you? â
â if i am a lover of impossible problems then you will have loved me for my impossibilities. â
â what else matters but this, me, us? â
â am i imagining this? â
â i want to see your art. â
â this night is stolen, i want grand larceny and this is petty theft. â
â austere. itâs a cold word. â
â you have never understood beauty and all the worse for you, you never will. â
â i am more addicted to the thought of your name on my tongue than i am to any other form of vice. â
â the thought of having you is more dangerous than any cocktail of drugs, the idea of belonging to you endlessly destructive. â
â itâs a fire. i used to burn out, now i just burn.â
â his name is written on my skin, he scarred me. â
â you just seem like youâre looking for something to overwhelm you.â
â you canât fix me. â
â i donât see anything to fix. â
â thank you for the shape you took in my life but itâs over now, it doesnât fit. â
â something is wrong with us, we are unwell, no one has ever felt any of this without destruction. â
â empires have fallen like this. â
â my god, what a waste of time doing anything else but holding you. â
â jesusfuckingchrist what have you done to me? â
â go on, ruin me. wreck me, please. â
â am i the girl who stays while others leave? â
â i love your brain.â
â can you love my brain even when it is small? when it is malevolent? when itâs violent? can you love it when it doesnât love me? â
â iâm going to tell you my secrets. â
â come home with me. â
â i want your future, i want it for me. â
â iâm going to replace those memories, iâm taking them back for me. â
â i want you to say everything, anything. i want to have your thoughts, i want to bottle them, i want to put them in my drawer for safekeeping. â
â jesus, weâre fucked, arenât we? â
â come outside, come look at the stars. â
â i worry that if you try to keep up with her, youâll burn out. â
â youâre wrong about her. â
â ether is what they called the air in the realm of the gods. a shining, fluid substance. â
â you poor thing, what a curse. i wonder which god you angered.â
â you canât just live in your past lives. â
â so this is what it is to love something you cannot control, it feels precisely like terror. â
â i thought youâd be sick of me by now. â
â every time you love, pieces of you break off and get replaced by something you steal from someone else. â
â yes, it is perilously wonderful to suffer so sweetly with you. â
â canât you see how intangibly i exist, and how perilously? â
â will I always fear him as much as I love him? â
â you really havenât changed, have you? â
â you can always undream me, unbelieve me. â
â iâm strange, okay weâre both strange, nobody understands us except for us. â
â you think i donât know that thereâs something wrong with me? â
â i think you need me more than you want me. â
â thereâs a difference between cravings and compulsions. â
â i love your brain even when i fear it. â
â have i already destroyed this little fledgling thing i tried to nurture? â
â whatever you are made of, i am made of it, too. â
â it isnât pretty, itâs lonely, itâs desolate, itâs a chilling portrait of vastness. â
â she does burn me, she ignites me. â
â she is my hope and for that she is dangerous, unequivocally, but she is also alive, unreservedly. â
â itâs you and me right now, stranger â
â itâs you and me alone in the ether, and you donât even know it yet. â
â this is what it looks like to love you; it looks like an abyss. â
â all falls come with danger, but not us. not us, we float. â
â because you and i, we are so different, arenât we, and yet we are more like each other than the rest of the world is like us. â