Katzoff Riggs Quotes

Mainland Wales, was somewhere before us but only dimly visible, an inky smudge squatting along the far horizon. ~ Ransom Riggs

A song and a smile from someone I cared about could be enough to distract me from all that darkness, if only for a little while. ~ Ransom Riggs

Enoch's jaw fell open. "Are you telling me these chickens lay exploding eggs?!" he said. "Only when they get excited," said Addison. "Most of their eggs are quite safe - and delicious! But it was the exploding ones that earned them their rather unkind name: Armageddon chickens. ~ Ransom Riggs

We were like astronauts floating through a starless universe. ~ Ransom Riggs

I loved Emma, and I'd told her so, and I wouldn't leave her behind for anything.
And not because I was noble or brave or chivalrous. I'm not any of those things. I was afraid that leaving her behind would rip me in half. ~ Ransom Riggs

If Cairnholm's only phone connected to some den of iniquity called the "piss hole," how did that bode for the rest of the island? Would my first trip to Europe be spent evading drunken maniacs and watching birds evacuate their bowels on rocky beaches? Maybe so. But if it meant that I'd finally be able to put my grandfather's mystery to rest and get on with my unextraordinary life, anything I had to endure would be worth it. ~ Ransom Riggs

Beyond our grim circle, the underground station looked like the aftermath of a nightclub bombing. Steam from burst pipes shrieked forth in ghostly curtains. Splintered monitors swung broken-necked from the ceiling. A sea of shattered glass spread all the way to the tracks, flashing in the hysterical strobe of red emergency lights like an acre-wide disco ball. ~ Ransom Riggs

He isn't normal," Emma said, grimacing as if this were the direst insult. "He's one of us! ~ Ransom Riggs

Because, I thought, a line from Tolkien materializing in my head, one does not simply walk into Mordor. ~ Ransom Riggs

My parents treated me like a breakable heirloom, afraid to fight or fret in front of me least I shatter. ~ Ransom Riggs

But you can't feel bad every second, I wanted to tell her. Laughing doesn't make bad things worse any more than crying makes them better. It doesn't mean you don't care, or that you've forgotten. It just means you're human. ~ Ransom Riggs

Early in life we recognize certain talents in ourselves, and we focus on those to the exclusion of others. It's not that nothing else is possible, but that nothing else was nurtured. ~ Ransom Riggs

Such was the way the sad world turned. ~ Ransom Riggs

I'd felt so many things since our journey began - joy, fear, hope, horror - but until now, I'd never once felt alone. ~ Ransom Riggs

Can you imagine, in a world so afraid of otherness, why this would be a danger to all peculiar-kind? ~ Ransom Riggs

It's a scarf," said Horace. "Miss P was able to smuggle me a pair of needles, and I knitted it while I was in my cell. I reckon that making it kept me from going mad in there." I thanked him and unfolded it. The scarf was simple and gray with knotted tassels on the ends, but it was well made and even had my initials monogrammed in one corner. JP. ~ Ransom Riggs

Still, I could have been kinder." She frowned, her eyes wandering. "Sibling relationships can be complex. I wonder, sometimes, if my own actions had some bearing upon the paths my brothers chose. Could I have been a better sister to them? Perhaps, as a young ymbryne, I was too focused on myself. ~ Ransom Riggs

I felt empty, too, and strangely heavy, like the planet was spinning too fast, heating up gravity, pulling me toward the floor. ~ Ransom Riggs

We're peculiar," he replied, sounding a bit puzzled. "Aren't you? ~ Ransom Riggs

He proceeded to give us directions in a lilting accent, which I found enormously entertaining. I loved hearing Welsh people talk, even if half of what they said was incomprehensible to me. ~ Ransom Riggs

The citizenry's primary occupations are rubbish picking and luring strangers into the Acre to cosh them on the head and rob them. For amusement, they ingest whatever flammable liquids are at hand and sing badly at the top of their lungs. The area's main exports are smelted iron slag, bone meal, and misery. ~ Ransom Riggs

There was a direct correlation between how nervous I was and how many dumb jokes I made. ~ Ransom Riggs

I have an unusual hobby: I collect pictures of people I don't know. It started when I was a kid growing up in South Florida, the land of junk stores, garage sales, and flea markets, as a kind of coping mechanism. ~ Ransom Riggs

A world so afraid of otherness. ~ Ransom Riggs

Worry is a complete circle of inefficient thought whirling about a pivot of fear. To avoid it, consider whether the problem in hand is your business. If it is not, turn to something that is. If it is your business, decide if it is your business now. If so, decide what is best to be done about it. If you know, get busy. If you don't know, find out promptly. Do these things; then rest your case on the determination that, no matter how hard things may turn out to be, you will amek the best of them - and more than that no man can do. Dr. Austen Fox Riggs ~ John Sedgwick

The wretchedest shantytowners we'd seen yet, they were slumped in the ashes, arranged in postures of such listless torpor that for a moment I mistook even the ones who were sitting upright for dead. Their hair and bodies were blacked with ash and grease, and their faces so afflicted with pits and scars that I wondered if they were lepers. As ~ Ransom Riggs

You used Neverleak," Shelley said, eyeing my craftsmanship with a skeptical frown. "The sale's on Stay-Tite." Shelley was the store manager, and her slumped shoulders and dour expression were as much a part of her uniform as the blue polo shirts we all had to wear. ~ Ransom Riggs

Through a bombed cemetery, long-forgotten Londoners unearthed and flung into trees, grinning in rotted formal wear. A curlicued swing set in a cratered playground. The horrors piled up, incomprehensible, the bombers now and then dropping flares to light it all with the pure, shining white of a thousand camera flashes. As if to say: Look. Look what we made. ~ Ransom Riggs

Which was just well: goodbyes had never been my strong suit anyway, and lately my life had felt like an unbroken series of them. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. ~ Ransom Riggs

Maybe," she said. "Maybe. But now you're making promises you might not be able to keep, and that's how people in love get very badly hurt. ~ Ransom Riggs

a line from Tolkien materializing in my head, one does not simply walk into Mordor. We ~ Ransom Riggs

I knew then that, from now on, every word that passed between us would hurt, would be wrapped up with and marked by the pain of this moment, and that I needed to pull away now or it would never stop. So I nodded sadly, hugged her one more time, and retreated to a corner to sleep, because I was very, very tired. ~ Ransom Riggs

So much of my life has been about self-effacement, pretense, masquerading, concealment, and indirection. ~ Marlon Riggs

He's wearing a costume," I whispered to Emma. Then, to the guy: "She doesn't see a lot of movies." "A costume?" Emma scrunched her brow. "But he's a grown man. ~ Ransom Riggs

Those who escaped the noose settled here, at the very bottom, the absolute edge of peculiar society. Exiled from the outcasts of outcasts ~ Ransom Riggs

As he always says, the day there's no time for manners, the world's lost to us anyway. ~ Ransom Riggs

Find the bird, find the loop, Yakob vai don't you understand you goddamned stupid yutzi ~ Ransom Riggs

You could never understand what it's like, being this close to death all the time. And ~ Ransom Riggs

There was something almost regal about him, I thought; a defiance I admired. He was a holdout who refused to give up his post. The last watchman at the end of the world. ~ Ransom Riggs

You're getting overwhelmed," said Emma. "Big tasks always seem that way if you try and figure out every little piece of them beforehand. We have to take it bit by bit. ~ Ransom Riggs