Beth Revis Quotes

You could drop me anywhere in the universe, blindfolded, and I'd know this was his room just from the smell. ~ Beth Revis

I might have the whole world now, but it's not enough if I don't get to share it with her. ~ Beth Revis

Or ... maybe I'm not going crazy. "Maybe I'm some sort of android-cyborg-clone-thing, and I'm just breaking down.
I'm not sure which way is worse.
Dad laughs. "You're not in your right mind, dear," he says. "No, no, no, you're not."
And then
- Silence.
Dad fades away. The reverie chair disappears.
There's just blackness. I remember then that I am in the reverie of something dead. Whatever that thing was, it was dead.
And, just as I'm starting to wonder if, perhaps, I have died, too, I see a light, far away in the corner of the dreamscape. The light isn't soft; it's not glowing. It crackles like silent lightning, burning with electricity, sparks flying out and fizzling in the dark.
I don't know why - it makes no sense, the way dreams often don't - but I want to touch the light.
So I do. ~ Beth Revis

I am surrounded by death, inside and out, and all it does is remind me of how futile everything is, everything ever was. ~ Beth Revis

It sparkles in the dim light of the room, and when he shakes it out, dust mingles with glitter. ~ Beth Revis

Family is never really gone. ~ Beth Revis

If we don't have that, what do we have to live for? Does it matter if it's a lie if it keeps us alive? ~ Beth Revis

Sometimes writing is hard. You know what's not hard? Watching Netflix. That's easy. ~ Beth Revis

Elder mocked me for praying once, and i spent an hour berating him for that. He ended up throwing up his hands, laughing, and telling me i could believe whatever i wanted if i was going to hold onto my beliefs so hard. ~ Beth Revis

I'd rather have answers than weapons. ~ Beth Revis

I have emotions, I whisper. I am nothing but a black hole of emotions. ~ Beth Revis

Other species have interstellar travel," Jyn protested. "That didn't just come from humans. The humans never would have figured it out if not for - " Burta ~ Beth Revis

This journey... it's long". He says this as if he's felt all 250 years of travel. ~ Beth Revis

It's hard to think about all the bad when she reminds me of all that's good. ~ Beth Revis

There is only him and me and this thing between us that I cannot name, not out loud, but that my heart knows is love. ~ Beth Revis

Love without choice isn't love at all. ~ Beth Revis

And here we are, in the middle, surrounded by a sea of stars.
A million suns.
Any of them could hold a planet. Any of them could hold a home.
But all of them are out of reach. [p.218] ~ Beth Revis

I never knew how easy it is to escape if you don't mind leaving nearly everything behind. ~ Beth Revis

I have never desired anything more than him in this moment. ~ Beth Revis

And I look at Harley, and the billions of stars are in his eyes, and he's drinking them up, pouring them into his soul. ~ Beth Revis

I have the whole world now, but I don't have him. ~ Beth Revis

But Amy," Elder says. "Space suits! ~ Beth Revis

I'll always come back to you. ~ Beth Revis

This ship is built on secrets; it runs on secrets", he says, tiny droplets of spittle flying from his mouth to my face. "And if you keep asking about them, you'll see how far I'm willing to go to keep mine." ~ Eldest ~ Beth Revis

They'll never truly be able to comprehend how much was lost for their limitless sky. ~ Beth Revis

When I finally get out of bed, the only thing I want to do is go straight to Amy and demand her forgiveness. Maybe we can at least go back to what we had before our fight, even if all we had was an awkward friendship punctuated by significant silences. ~ Beth Revis

I open my mouth. I want o say: I'm breaking, and i need someone to hold me together.
But no sound comes out. ~ Beth Revis

This is... mating, it's not love. ~ Beth Revis

You must dedicate your whole life to this idea: you are the caretaker of every single person on this ship. They are your responsibility.
You can never show weakness in front of them: you are their strength.
You can never let them see you in despair: you are their hope.
You must always be everything to everyone on board. ~ Beth Revis

I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn't give up. Then I wrote one more book. ~ Beth Revis

Besides," he says, "every hero I know is soaked in blood. ~ Beth Revis

I learned that life is so, so fragile. I learned that you can know someone for just days and never forget the impression he left on you. I learned that art can be beautiful and sad at the same time. I learned that if someone loves you, he'll wait for you to love him back. I learned that how much you want something doesn't determine whether you get it or not, that "no" might not be enough, that life isn't fair, that my parents can't save me, that maybe no one can. ~ Beth Revis

She was a good person. She didn't deserve to die."
"I don't think it works that way. ~ Beth Revis

Maybe one day the smears of paint Harley left throughout Godspeed will fade, and maybe the stars never will, but i'd rather have Harley's colors. ~ Beth Revis

Like walking through water.
Like drowning. ~ Beth Revis

She holds the brightly colored wires in her hand. "Well, that did the trick," she says, smiling. ~ Beth Revis

I will never, never be the same.
I have seen stars.
Real stars. ~ Beth Revis

The sea is a dangerous place because it makes you believe in forever. ~ Beth Revis

She stares back into me, as if we are both seeking a humanity that neither of us has. ~ Beth Revis

There's a war going on, that much is clear. And I'm no longer sure I'm on the right side. ~ Beth Revis

Sometimes home is a person. ~ Beth Revis

He treats books like treasured, rare things, and I guess they are, but my father used to dog-ear books and read them until they fell apart, and I like his method better ~ Beth Revis

I would trade all the stars in the universe if I could just have him back again. ~ Beth Revis

That is what a book is: a million little things, a thousand feelings, hundreds of experiences, all melted together and sculpted into a book-shaped vessel. ~ Beth Revis

I feel the darkness inside me like a creature curled up in my chest, breathing smoke and fire. It is always there. It weighs on me. It's not contained by anything but my own skin. Sometimes it sleeps. Sometimes it doesn't. ~ Beth Revis

Remember that time I punched you in front of my father's grave? I ask in a sentimental voice. ~ Beth Revis

I'm not human.
I'm better. ~ Beth Revis

Kayleigh was right. Without the pills, you really do feel nothing.
And nothing can be nice. ~ Beth Revis

Who are the real monsters? ~ Beth Revis

Old people die. It's what they do. ~ Amy ~ Beth Revis

You could have valued our lives more than your secrets. ~ Beth Revis

Because if I break, they'll break too. It's a responsibility I'd never really felt before, or at least I never thought about enough to name. But, Bo's actions just cement my place in my family. He can walk away from the dinner table. I can't. ~ Beth Revis

Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. Because ~ Beth Revis

I feel hollow inside, as if there's a black hole where my heart was, as if I am caving in around myself. ~ Beth Revis

More than the sound of my own beating heart, I miss the sound of a ticking clock. Time passes. It must pass ... ~ Beth Revis

Doc begs me for the wires to fix the pump.
We should at least keep putting the hormones in the water," he insists, "so that they don't start mating with relatives."
"Most people don't want to commit incest," I say dryly. ~ Beth Revis

We're the ones who arent normal. People are supposed to be like that: obedient, calm, working together. It's us-who can't focus, who can't work together, who can't do the Feeder or Shipper jobs-we're the ones who aren't normal. We're the ones who have to take the mental meds just so we don't go loons. ~ Beth Revis

But death doesn't work like that. It doesn't care if someone loves you, doesn't want you to go. It just takes. It takes and it takes until eventually you have nothing left. ~ Beth Revis

And it is everything I have longed for, and everything that breaks my heart. ~ Beth Revis

Images of broken light dance behind my eyelids. How could this giant lamp compare to the sun?
Everything is wrong here. Shattered. Broken.
Like the light.
Like me.
I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn't have one.
I am surrounded by walls.
I have just replaced one box for another. ~ Beth Revis

I have no idea why she needs them. I just know that I'd face another plague to get them for her if I had to. Fortunately, it's a lot easier than that. - Elder ~ Beth Revis

I reached inside her and pulled out the deepest memories in her body, the memories that words can't describe, the memories that are as much a piece of her as her arms and legs. Those are the ones she's filled with now. ~ Beth Revis

FAILURE IS INEVITABLE. I will fail. We all will. And having failed, and gotten back up, and failed again, taught me that I can survive failure. This is a downfall in most modern stories: the hero always wins. Because while this story is inspiring, it's also false. In reality, not everyone wins. It's 100% true that no one wills all the time, and we expect that - every hero must fall at least once. But it's also 100% true that some people never win at all, and that's the thing we try so hard to ignore behind the pretty stories. I could spend the rest of my life trying to be a prima ballerina, and it would not happen. I would fail at that for the rest of my life. FAILURE TEACHES US WHO WE ARE. Because even though I know I would fail forever at being a prima ballerina, I also know that I am not someone who should be a prima ballerina. It's not who I am, it's not what I want. Of course I would fail at it. ~ Beth Revis

Eldest taught me about ancient religions that worshiped the sun. I never understood why- it's just a ball of light and heat. But if the sun of Sol-Earth swirls in colors and lights like that girl's hair, well, I can see why the ancients would worship that. ~ Beth Revis

I saw you running," she says, her attention on the rabbit. "What were you running from?"
"Just running," I say. She watching me silently and intently, like a cat.
"Why?" she asks.
I shrug. "Why not?"
"It's not Productive." She says it like productivity is holy, the only thing worth having.
"So?" ~Amy ~ Beth Revis

It takes Elder about 2.5 seconds to reach my room after I com him.
"What's wrong?" he asks, skidding through the door.
I laugh at the way his eyes search my room, looking for a dragon to slay for his damsel in distress. ~ Beth Revis

She is trying to control me with fear, because she cannot control me any other way.
My eyes open wide. They burn as if they are on fire - no, as if they are made of fire. Eyes are the window to the soul. ~ Beth Revis

So you're sticking with me, and I'm sticking with you. ~ Beth Revis

But of course these are scientists. Tell them to leave something alone, and all they want to do is poke it with a stick. ~ Beth Revis

The dark sky.
A hundred million stars.
More stars than I've ever seen before. My eyes let me see farther, but they don't show me the one thing I want to see. I would trade all the stars in the universe if I could just have him back again.

Wind whistles through the trees nearby. Birdsong weaves in and out of the sound.

The hybrids emerge from the communication building, heads tilted to the sky.

And then we see the end.
Godspeed's engine was nuclear; who knows what fueled the biological weapons. But they explode together. In space, they don't make the familiar mushroom cloud. They don't make the boom! of an exploding bomb.

There is, against the dark sky, a brief flash of light. It is filled with colors, like a nebula or the aurora borealis, bursting like a popped bubble.

Nothing else - no sound of an explosion, no tremors in the earth, no smell of smoke. Not here, on the surface of the planet.
Nothing else to signify Elder's death.
Just light.
And then it's gone.

And then he's gone. ~ Beth Revis

Wannagogardenwime?" I ask all in one breath. My eyes grow wide. What came over me? Why would I blurt that out like that? ~Elder ~ Beth Revis

A splatter of rain on my skin, but its bright and sunny under the blue sky and Jason's there, and we almost kiss but everything changes and were at that party where we met. ~ Beth Revis

Science can make a heart beat," Jack says softly, each word falling on me like a caress. "But it can't make it race. ~ Beth Revis

We are, at least in part, who we remember ourselves to be. Take away our memories, and you take away our selves. ~ Beth Revis

That was before I'd started thinking about how life stuck on a ship wouldn't be so bad if Elder walked around pantless more. ~ Beth Revis

As the dreamscape around me grows clearer, I slip further away from it. The mind is a magical thing, I'm discovering. A dreamscape is made of thought and is wider than the sky, able to grow large enough to fit not just our own world, but every possibility and impossibility beyond it. Once I quit thinking of it as being forced into the laws of physics, it's easy to manipulate the dreamscape into anything I want. I don't know how I know all this, no more than I understand how I know things when I dream. I just do.
I throw up my hand, and a wall rises between the orange grove and me. Behind the wall, I start creating the world I need in Representative Belles's mind. ~ Beth Revis

Mom used to say that the thoughts in our heads were nothing more than electrical impulses. I remember Dad and her talking about this over dinner. It frustrated Dad that the human brain can fire electrical sparks and think, but that the electricity he'd pump into an android brain would never give it independent thought. The body isn't that different from a machine. Humans and androids both run on electricity.
That lightning spark of energy I saw in the reverie.
That was my mother's last thought, an echo of electricity, something that sparked when I entered her dreamscape.
That spark is gone now. Her life is gone now. Everything that made her, her, is gone now. Faded into nothing. ~ Beth Revis

Should we wait?"
"Yes! YES. Wait - I'm coming. Just give me some time to thaw, and I will rise from the ice and live again. I will be your frozen phoenix. Just give me a chance! ~ Beth Revis

I run and run and run. Past the hospital, through the garden, past a pond. And to the cold metal wall. I stop, gulping at the air, my heart racing in my ears. I reach up with one hand and touch the wall. My fingers curl into a fist, but it falls weakly to my side. And that's when I realize there is no where to run. 'But', my heart whispers, 'there is Elder. ~ Beth Revis

If you do this, Nedra, if you choose necromancy… I cannot follow you into that darkness."
"Oh, Grey," I said, shifting my bag onto my shoulder. "What do you know of darkness? ~ Beth Revis

Be fearless. Write what you want. Write how you want. Create art. ~ Beth Revis

I think his chutz is up, don't you? ~ Beth Revis

Memories always kill nightmares. ~ Beth Revis

What matters right now is this: we're each of us standing here, together, alive, together. ~ Beth Revis

As soon as I say the words, I know they were the right ones. My eyes dip down to Dad's memorial plaque. Truth doesn't lie in the heart of fortune ... it's under Triumph Towers, where the labs are. ~ Beth Revis

For a moment, he looks back at me, and his farewell is in his smile. Then he turns to the stars.
And he is gone. ~ Beth Revis

All of them? I ask. I could almost understand her need to awaken her parents, but we don't need to add nearly a hundred frozen people to the cacophony of voices around us. ~ Beth Revis

It's bad, being frozen, but it's better than waking up alone. ~ Beth Revis

She stops speaking, but I can hear her silent sobs. They're the loudest thing I've ever heard. ~ Beth Revis

But why run? Run where? What's the point?
Seems silly, running.
May as well stand here.
And wait.
The world seems slow. ~ Beth Revis

A week ago, I would have snorted at those words. Love was no more real than the "god" Amy worshipped. I'd heard of "love" in the same context that I heard of those religious fairy tales - as stories Sol-Earth people used to tell to make themselves feel better about the imperfect world they helped to create.

But now... ~ Beth Revis

The truth is, sometimes siblings have nothing in common but blood...Sometimes you stay up late at night, thinking things that make you feel like a heartless monster, wishing for something different and then feeling sick with guilt because you know what the cost of "different" would be...There's a difference between having no siblings and having a broken one. ~ Beth Revis

Of everyone on this ship, even the frozen bodies of my parents, Elder's the only one who handed me truth and waited for me to accept it. ~ Beth Revis

And this is what she wants to do to people. Let them have their own lives, until she wants them. Give them the strength of giants, but not the power to control it. ~ Beth Revis

I look up, and he's searching my eyes, just like he did after kissing me for the first time in the rain. "What are you looking for?"
He doesn't answer.
He doesn't need to.
I know what he wants.
And it's not fair.
"Just because we're the only two teenagers on this whole ship doesn't mean I have to love you. Why can't I have a choice? Options?"
Elder steps back, stung.
"Look, it's not that I don't like you," I say quickly, reaching for him. He jerks away. "It's just…"
"Just what?" he growls.
Just that if I was back on Earth instead of on this damn ship, if I had met Elder at school or at a club or on a blind date, if I had my choice between Elder and every other boy in the world…Would I love him then?
Would he love me?
Love without choice isn't love at all.
"Just that I don't want to be with you just because there's no one else." [p.57-58] ~ Beth Revis

I'll always come back to you, he tells me, pulling me close.
Always.
Beth Revis (Shades of Earth pg. 441) ~ Beth Revis

I would use the same word to describe both my joy and the rain: torrential. This - this - this is all I ever wanted from the world: wide-open spaces and cooling rain and the chance to run. ~ Beth Revis

What is in our hearts is real whether we name it or let it exist only in darkness or silence. ~ Beth Revis

I want her so much that it overrides everything else, every other thought in my head, every instinct, every restraint. ~ Beth Revis

But i don't care. Because we can say them or not; it doesn't matter. What is in our heats is real whether we name it or let it exist only in darkness and silence. ~ Beth Revis