Amie Kaufman Quotes

#1. I had no idea how safe I was, because I'd never been unsafe.

Amie Kaufman

#2. It's not about what I say, right? It's what I do that matters here.

Amie Kaufman

#3. How do you live again, knowing what waits for you in the end?

Amie Kaufman

#4. Letting yourself get hurt isn't brave, love. Brave is protecting others from hurt.

Amie Kaufman

#5. Interviewer: You said I'm the first psychoanalyst you've met who had a sense of humor. Meaning you've met others who didn't?

Ezra: Proper little Sherlock over here, huh.

Amie Kaufman

#6. I WOULD RATHER BE NUMB THAN STAND HERE IN THE LIGHT OF A SUN THAT CAN NEVER CHASE THE CHILL AWAY.

Amie Kaufman

#7. I wish to tell her I am sorry. I wish to take this cup from her hands. I wish for things that I can never have, and in that, I think perhaps I am closer to them than I ever have been.
And still a billion light-years away.

Amie Kaufman

#8. I'm sorry," I whisper. My cold lips fumble the words.
"Don't be." His voice is a low rumble against me, the sound carrying through my bones, clearer than any of the voices I've been hearing. "You've got nothing to be sorry for.

Amie Kaufman

#9. Dislike is much easier to handle than sympathy.

Amie Kaufman

#10. And blood and tears and screams did not matter anymore, because at least they are together.

Amie Kaufman

#11. You don't mention death when it's hovering near someone you love. You don't want t attract the reaper's attention.

Amie Kaufman

#12. Some people, when they lose it, they scream, they fight. I hope that would be me

Amie Kaufman

#13. It's raining," I say, voice hoarse from sleep. I clear my throat and try again. "It's fine. Straight from the clouds to you."
She frowns, still huddling over and trying to shelter from it. "Straight from the clouds? Is that hygienic?

Amie Kaufman

#14. A computer will perform a takeoff or landing with all the grace of a person. It is only for combat
only for the artistry of ruin
that these vessels have pilot seats at all anymore. There is something in humanity more suited to the mechanics of murder than any machine yet devised.

Amie Kaufman

#15. If I breathed, I would sigh. I would scream. I would cry.

Amie Kaufman

#16. There are no stars, because there are never any stars here, only a thick darkness that rushes down her throat and into her heart. She dreams of drowning.

Amie Kaufman

#17. I can see his breath stirring the dust in the air, making it dance in the beam from the flashlight. It quickens as I watch him, until I can almost hear a waltz, each particle of dust twirling to the ghost of that old song.

Amie Kaufman

#18. I would say inhuman. But your kind perfected the clockwork of murder long ago.

Amie Kaufman

#19. No neuroprogrammer is stupid enough to make a computer capable of conceptualizing deceit.

Amie Kaufman

#20. Just because you couldn't save everyone doesn't mean you're any less of a - " "A what?" "A hero.

Amie Kaufman

#21. And from the inside, surrounded by the joy and devotion and loyalty of my friends, the shimmer of rage on the outside of our lives looks paper-thin.

Amie Kaufman

#22. Impulses in our brains are electrical sparks that tell us what we're seeing, tasting, hearing - and everything we do, all our muscle responses and movements, they're responses to electrical signals too.

Amie Kaufman

#23. Is there really a lilac bush?"
"Hell yes, there is. I nearly killed it when I fell off the roof and landed in the middle of it, but it was tougher than it looked. Kind of like another Lilac I know.

Amie Kaufman

#24. You're you,' he repeats, his eyes full of grief. 'You're the same girl who crashed on this planet with me, who I dragged through forests and over mountains, who climbed through a shipwreck full of bodies to save my life. You're the same girl I loved, and I love you now.

Amie Kaufman

#25. You've ruined me," she repeats, her voice quieting a little as it catches. "You've ruined me - you made me wake up. And now I can't get rid of you." Her voice surges again as I reach out, curling my hand around her arm, her skin flushed hot under my fingers. "You won't leave me alone.

Amie Kaufman

#26. That's so not your business it almost punches clean past the event horizon of Not Your Business and becomes Your Business again.

Amie Kaufman

#27. My world has been torn apart and stitched back together too many times, and now I exist only as a tattered patchwork of myself - unable to think, unable to feel anything other than numbness.

Amie Kaufman

#28. What do you know of souls and hearts and how they break here? You don't know me at all.

Amie Kaufman

#29. Love, and trust. The things that make us human. They could have been mine, if only I could have leapt. If only we could have leapt.

Amie Kaufman

#30. They are beyond me.
These humans.
With their brief lives and their tiny dreams and their hopes that seem as fragile as glass.
Until you see them by starlight, that is.

Amie Kaufman

#31. AND THEN I REACH INSIDE MYSELF. < DIRECTIVE QUANDARY. PROTECT. PRIORITIZE. > REACHING DEEP. < DELETING SUBDIRECTORY 84823MOR-(*-)001 > AND I OPEN THE DOORS TO HANGAR BAY 4.

Amie Kaufman

#32. AND THEN I REACH INSIDE MYSELF. DIRECTIVE QUANDARY. PROTECT. PRIORITIZE. REACHING DEEP. DELETING SUBDIRECTORY 84823MOR-(*-)001 AND I OPEN THE DOORS TO HANGAR BAY 4.

Amie Kaufman

#33. Why not believe, Syra? If in faith you risk nothing, but through faithlessness, you risk everything?

Amie Kaufman

#34. And now, born from the ashes, she's a warrior in bloodied black.

Amie Kaufman

#35. Flynn -I'm glad you ruined me."
Her voice stabs my heart, because I recognize that tone. I've heard it before. "Don't start with the good-byes

Amie Kaufman

#36. For the first time I can see this other longing
the desire to stay. For the first time I realize that maybe she insists on us staying apart because she doesn't want to lose this all over again.

Amie Kaufman

#37. Now Miss LaRoux's getting my ass kicked on the sparring mats as well. Is there any part of my life that girl can't mess with?

Amie Kaufman

#38. Now I feel adrift - except for the tether binding me here, to this girl at my side.

Amie Kaufman

#39. All that matters is I love you, and the thought of you safe is the only thing keeping me going

Amie Kaufman

#40. I've seen people die. Die hard. Die messy. Job like mine, you live with the reaper every day. But if you're unlucky, it's not the bullets that kill you in this gig. It's moment like these. Killing you one piece at a time.

Amie Kaufman

#41. The human brain has the computational efficiency of 10^-26. You are an abacus of horse guts and shiny beads beside me. You do not understand. Cannot comprehend. And I have no time to bend the meat inside your skull and make it grasp the simple truth that still somehow eludes you.

Amie Kaufman

#42. Or else I'm dead, and I've ended up in hell after all, and it's an escape pod with Lilac LaRoux.

Amie Kaufman

#43. What does it mean?" Flynn turns to gaze at me, eyes finally meeting mine.
I find myself smiling because I know exactly what it means. "It means the clouds are clearing on Avon.

Amie Kaufman

#44. Though I feel I should warn you that you that you could be here for a while. My friends aren't really known for their punctuality.

Amie Kaufman

#45. His eyes move to my lips, and I know he's thinking the same thing; I can feel it in the way the air charges between us. I can almost taste him half an inch away, can feel the way the tiny hairs on my skin lift and reach for him like plants seeking the sunlight.

Amie Kaufman

#46. This tug-of-war between wanting her, and just wanting her gone.

Amie Kaufman

#47. Maybe we wouldn't even like each other if we weren't fighting for our lives every second of every day.

Amie Kaufman

#48. Sometimes you take all my words away from me.

Amie Kaufman

#49. But I've felt your grief, your loss. And though your species is capable of horrors, it's capable of beauty, too. To end it now would be no better than taking your dreams away; to bring death robs your species of the chance to heal.

Amie Kaufman

#50. Well, I reply, using the calm tone I know gets under her skin. I wish I was noble enough not to enjoy it, but I came to terms with my lack of nobility long ago.

Amie Kaufman

#51. More rain. If there's any more ran than this, I think, we'll need gills. We could swim up to the sky and leave this place with no need to wait for a rescue ship.

Amie Kaufman

#52. Now it looks no different from a patch of wildflowers growing in the forest. You could walk right by it, and never know it was there. Except that I do. It's my landmark, now. I'll always know how far I am from this spot. From her.

Amie Kaufman

#53. You don't understand the unbearable beauty of being you.

Amie Kaufman

#54. Beautiful? I've always been reasonably pretty - but enough money would turn even a cow into a catch.

Amie Kaufman

#55. Forget everything else. Forget everyone else. You're exactly my kind of girl.

Amie Kaufman

#56. ..Look out at the nothing and feel it looking back. Then you know exactly how much you add up to.

Amie Kaufman

#57. I'm not doing much at all. I mimght as well be a rag doll. Comes complete with matching shoes. Spine sold separately.

Amie Kaufman

#58. The universe was here before you, and it will go on after you. The only way it will remember you is if you do something worthy of remembrance.

Amie Kaufman

#59. All of it - for this. Leading us to a door we can't open, a password we don't have.

Meagan Spooner

#60. What, did he think I was just going to melt into his arms? Start a tragic and dramatic tale of star-crossed lovers on a war-torn planet?

Amie Kaufman

#61. She's gazing down at me, Stone-faced Chase, absolutely unforgiving, soot and ashes streaking her face like war paint.

Amie Kaufman

#62. But this guy ... this guy makes me pause. Makes me forget all of that. Dark, tumbly hair, thick brows, dangerously sweet eyes. Sensuous mouth, tiny smirk barely hidden at its corner. He's got a poets mouth. Artistic, expressive.

Amie Kaufman

#63. How is it that I can want him so badly when he's only been gone from me for a minute?

Amie Kaufman

#64. He can't take his eyes off the stars, but I can't take mine off his face.

Amie Kaufman

#65. She wants to distract me that night, keep us from revisiting the conversation about the fuse. I've considered telling her that if she wants to distract me, all she has to do is take her shirt off.

Amie Kaufman

#66. Promise me that no matter what you hear, you won't go off on your own to investigate. I want your word. There's a command in his voice, soft as it is.

Amie Kaufman

#67. Most people would say I'm pretty cold, but I think of it more as ... private. People are always saying "how are you?" to each other, and I guess I don't see why I should answer such a personal question for just anyone.

Amie Kaufman

#68. I never knew it was possible to be so miserable in so many ways.

Amie Kaufman

#69. Tarver lifts one hand to touch my face, tracing the curve of my cheek. "Lilac, if something happened to you," he murmurs, "I would be anything but fine.

Amie Kaufman

#70. Perhaps bravery is simply the face humanity wraps around its collective madness.

Amie Kaufman

#71. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. - Orwell

Amie Kaufman

#72. Part of being alive is having life change us. The people around us, the events we live through, all of them shape us. And that's what I think you're afraid of. Maybe not of dying. But of this you, the you you've become, ceasing to exist.

Amie Kaufman

#73. I am frequently underestimated. I think it's because I'm short.

Amie Kaufman

#74. Your key concerns at that stage?"

"Well, Miss LaRoux had a party she didn't want to miss, and I - "

"Major, you don't seem to understand the seriousness of your situation."

"Sure I do. What the hell do you think our key concerns were?

Amie Kaufman

#75. When the light that kisses the back of her eyes were birthed, her ancestors were not yet born. How many human lives have ended in the time it took that light to reach her?

How many people have loved only to have lost? How countless, the hopes that have died?

But not this one.

Amie Kaufman

#76. The decker these ***holes brought with them is top tier, but I'm going to stomp his jelly beans so hard his kids will be born crooked.

Amie Kaufman

#77. Am I not merciful?

Amie Kaufman

#78. But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?

Amie Kaufman

#79. Funny how I was old enough by sixteen to drink, fight and vote, but even two years later I am to young to respect.

Amie Kaufman

#80. It's all I can do not to turn my face toward his, the way a plant grows toward the light.

Amie Kaufman

#81. Where will I sit? Sit? Why, on this comfortable chaise longue I've carried here for you in my pocket, Your Highness, so glad you asked. I clamp my mouth shut, struggling not to say it aloud.

Amie Kaufman

#82. THE LINCOLN HAS ITS SCARS ALSO. MY FINGERPRINTS ACROSS ITS THROAT.

Amie Kaufman

#83. She may be trained, but I'm fighting for my family, my home, my freedom. She's fighting for a goddamn paycheck.

Amie Kaufman

#84. Whatever they've done to me, Tarver, whatever I am
I love you. Don't forget that.

Amie Kaufman

#85. I could tell myself that I'm doing it because she'll get back to her feet just to spite me - but the truth is, I really just want to piss her off. Keeping her moving is a bonus.

Amie Kaufman

#86. The universe owes you nothing, Kady. It has already given you everything, after all. It was here long before you, and it will go on long after you. The only way it will remember you is to do something worth remembrance.

Amie Kaufman

#87. My brain feels like it's running on a treadmill in a pool of tar.

Amie Kaufman

#88. I should have told you I loved you every day. I should have given you the stars.

Amie Kaufman

#89. Lilac won't talk to me again. There's a tremor. Lilac won't kiss me again. I won't hear her laugh. My lungs constrict. Why am I doing this to myself ?

Amie Kaufman

#90. Just once I'd like to look like I've got myself together.

Amie Kaufman

#91. If you ever wanted to take a run at it, I'd say now's your time. There's hardly any competition, unless you count me. Though I am of course very handsome, even dead.

Amie Kaufman

#92. Are you afraid?"
"Yes."
"Energy never stops, remember. It just changes forms."
"I am still afraid.

Amie Kaufman

#93. And there it is, against all hope, like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds. The smallest hint of a smile.

Amie Kaufman

#94. I know a thousand different smiles, each with its own nuanced shade of meaning, but I don't know how to reach the few feet away to touch this person next to me. I don't know how to talk to him. Not when it's real.

Amie Kaufman

#95. A duet in code and electron.
Age and youth and cynicism and hope.

Amie Kaufman

#96. I reach for her hand and wind my fingers through hers, turning them so the rain patters down onto her palm. I trace a circle there with my thumb, smoothing the water in her skin. I want to show her there's nothing to be afraid of.

Amie Kaufman

#97. It's not that he's choosing me, a girl he met less than a month ago
he's choosing a world in which no one has to die.

Amie Kaufman

#98. Life is pain. We are all in pain, all the time."
"There are other things this universe has to offer," says the creature, "Light, live, touch, sensation. The way you are all made of the same pieces; the same fragments of stardust and yet you are all so different.

Amie Kaufman

#99. The truth. Nobody's coming for us. The place we're running to probably isn't safe. And there is nobody I can trust in this equation except Ezra and Byron.

Amie Kaufman

#100. Either he trusts me, or he's just that foolish. Probably both. He'd certainly have to be foolish to trust me.

Amie Kaufman