Erin morgenstern quotes

...He is sure that the Bailey he is now is closer to the Bailey he is supposed to be than the Bailey he had been before

Sting told me if I love somebody I should set them free. I doubt Sting ever loved anyone with wings. If he did he might rethink such a stupid sentiment. I suppose the point is to wait for your love to come back to you voluntarily. I wonder if there’s a difference between setting something free and letting it go? I probably did it wrong. I should stop taking advice from my radio. I worry that you’re lost. I keep a heart-shaped cage unlocked for you, out on the street where it can easily be seen. So if one day you return at least you’ll have a place to stay.

You told me love was fickle and fleeting.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

If she were gone I would be nothing. You should think better of yourself than to settle for that.

Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.

Perhaps it is controlling the chaos within more than the chaos without.

Trapped in silence, Marco traces apologies and adorations across Celia's body with his tongue. Mutely expressing all the things he cannot speak aloud. He finds other ways to tell her, his fingers leaving faint trails of ink in their wake. He savors every sound he elicits from her. The entire room trembles as they come together. And though there are a great many fragile objects contained within it, nothing breaks.

I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.

And now, I'm a best selling author, a different sort of fairy tale that I still sometimes wonder when I'll wake up from.

A woman I should like to think I know rather well and a woman I had always considered a mystery, are in fact the same person.

I'm kind of big on performance in general. I like the sort of entertainment where you can go in and be fully immersed in it.

The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones.

Our instructors do not understand how it is. To be bound to someone in such a way. They are too old, too out of touch with their emotions. They no longer remember what it is to live and breathe within the world. They think it simple to pit any two people against each other. It is never simple. The other person becomes how you define your life, how you define yourself. They become as necessary as breathing. Then they expect the victor to continue on without that. It would be like pulling the Murray twins apart and expecting them to be the same. They would be whole but not complete.

You believe you could not live with the pain. Such pain is not lived with. It is only endured. I am sorry.

I think looking forward will be better than looking back.

I cannot let a place that is so important to so many people fade away. Something that is wonder and comfort and mystery all together that they have nowhere else. If you had that, wouldn't you want to keep it?

The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on your fingers. Some people can get rid of it but it’s still there, the events and things that pushed you to where you are now.

The silence that falls between them is a comfortable one. He longs to reach over and touch her, but he resists, fearful of destroying the delicate camaraderie they are building. He steals glances instead, watching the way the light falls over her skin. Several times he catches her regarding him in a similar manner, and the moments when she holds his eyes with hers are sublime.

I'm an emotional sort of person in general and I have a vivid imagination, so I feel the whole spectrum of emotion strongly when I write.

Widge can see the past." Poppet says suddenly. "That's why his stories are so good." "The past is easier," Widget says. "It's already there." "In the stars?" Bailey asks. "No." Widget says. "On people. The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on fingers. Some people can get rid of it but it's still there, the events and t hings that pushed you to where you are now.

It's helpful for me to get ideas - the physical action of painting. Sometimes it frees up your writer brain. It's nice for me now that the writing has become a serious career that painting can become more like a hobby.

It is perhaps both a blessing and a curse that fictional worlds spring into my mind nearly fully formed and it takes quite a while to sift through everything to find the story.

You're in the right place at the right time, and you care enough to do what needs to be done. Sometimes that's enough.

Timing is a sensitive thing.

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.

I like to call it nighttime brain: the way your mind seems to function on a different frequency than it does during daylight hours - which can be good or bad but also can lead to unexpected epiphanies or experiences that wouldn't be the same at any other time of day.

I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister.

There is so much that glows in the circus, from flames to lanterns to stars. I have heard the expression “trick of the light” applied to sights within Le Cirque des Reves so frequently that I sometimes suspect the entirety of the circus is itself a complex illusion of illumination” .

I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared.

I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will. When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn't it? p.369

I'm a firm believer that lighting affects mood, and twinkly lights on strings bring something magical to occasions ranging from concerts to weddings, though I'm fond of using them as year-round home decor. There's a reason why they're sometimes called fairy lights. When the night is right, there aren't any strings at all.

Before you leave, the fortune teller reminds you that the future is never set in stone.

It is a matter of perspective, the difference between opponent and partner," Tsukiko says. "You step to the side and the same person can be either or both or something else entirely. It is difficult to know which face is true.

Tarot is just stories on cards.

I think that's a hallmark of a really good story that it has readers that it speaks to more than others.

Follow your dreams Bailey. Be they Harvard or somehing else entirely. No matter what that father of yours says, or how loudly he might say it. He forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself

I think I get some of my love of adult books that can be fun from Douglas Adams.

I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well.

I am haunted by the ghost of my father, I think that should allow me to quote Hamlet as much as I please.

I keep waiting for things to get back down to whelming, but they stay at overwhelming.

I saw in details while she saw in scope. Not seeing the scope is why I am here and she is not. I took each element spearately and never looked to see that they never did fit together properly

This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it.

It is likely to make us think we are not caged. We cannot feel the bars unless we push against them.

The boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies out sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that become intimately familiar beneath his ink-stained fingers, formed again and again in increasingly steady lines.

The fact that people are already reading and loving something I wrote is still hard to believe.

I don't have any particular rituals, I sometimes like to write in longhand when I'm searching for ideas but I do the vast majority by typing, I can't always keep up with my thoughts longhand. I'm not a coffee shop writer because I feel obliged to order more coffee and then I end up over-caffeinated.

All empires fall eventually. It is the way of things.

Grow up, Bailey." "That is precisely what I'm doing," Bailey says. "I don't care if you don't understand that. Staying here won't make me happy. It will make you happy because you're insipid and boring, and an insipid, boring life is enough for you. It's not enough for me. It will never be enough for me. So I'm leaving. Do me a favor and marry someone who will take decent care of the sheep.

I couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real.

You send me all these roses. Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up. I’m running out of vases. I didn’t know roses came in so many colors. You say they’re the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain. I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. And you don’t get it. You say you love me, but you don’t speak my language. You don’t even realize I’m an orchid girl.

It is destroying me that I cannot ask you to dance.

I don’t have the time to devote to circles or covens. I have to fit things in when and where I can, in stolen moments and cups of coffee. Stirring clockwise to conjure. Widdershins to banish. There’s never enough time, and rarely enough caffeine, but I make do with what I have. Besides, cauldrons and pointy hats are overrated. Sometimes I see other customers practicing. Pouring their cream and sugar with studied intent. Stirring with purpose. I add an extra spoonful of sugar to my own coffee for them, to make all of our enchantments sweeter.

I have absurdly vivid dreams.

It's a wonderful sort of feeling when people want to spend more time in a world you created.

Do you remember all of your audiences?" Marco asks. "Not all of them," Celia says. "But I remember the people who look at me the way you do." "What way might that be?" "As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me." " I am not afraid of you," Marco says.

Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright.

You don't have to be a chef or even a particularly good cook to experience proper kitchen alchemy: the moment when ingredients combine to form something more delectable than the sum of their parts.

Better to have a single perfect diamond than a sack of flawed stones.

...the thrill of being surrounded by something wondrous and fantastical, only magnified and focused directly at her. The feel of his skin against hers reverberates across her entire body, though his fingers remain entwined in hers.

I paint very messy. I throw paint around. So when I let myself do the same sort of thing with my writing, and I would just write and write and write and revise, that's when I found my rhythm in writing.

The Burgess sisters arrived together. Tara and Lainie do a little bit of everything. Sometimes dancers, sometimes actresses. Once they were librarians, but that is a subject they will only discuss if heavily intoxicated.

And there are really never endings, happy or otherwise.

I don;t think there's anything wrong with being a dreamer. There is not. But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.

Where do you get your ideas? people ask. Sometimes they’re at the bottoms of cups of tea. Sometimes they’re lurking in my shower. Sometimes they’re waiting patiently in glass cases in museums.

Marco moves to close the distance between them, kissing away her tears before catching her lip with his own. As he kisses her, the bonfire glows brighter. The acrobats catch the light perfectly as they spin. The entire circus sparkles, dazzling every patron.

Comic-Con was crazy, good crazy... Five minutes after I'm done, the cast of 'Twilight' is where I was sitting.

The circus arrives without warning.

I suggest you keep your distance from her and concentrate on your own work.” “I’m in love with her.” “I am sorry to hear that,” he says. “It will make the challenge a great deal more difficult for you.” “We have been playing at this for more than a decade, when does it end?” “It ends when there is a victor.

“Nothing's impossible,” Poppet responds. She smiles at him and jumps, her red hair trailing out behind her as she falls.

When you meet someone new who instantly gets you, your sense of humor and your attitudes and your worldview, even if theirs are different - and you get them in return. You both talk and talk and agree and laugh and nod and yes, yes, of course you should get another round of drinks.

„I forgive you for stealing my shawl.“ She smiles as he laughs. And then she vanishes. A simple trick of distracting his attention long enough to slip out through the hall, despite the lingering temptation to stay.

I tried to explain as much as I could," Poppet says. "I think I made an analogy about cake." "Well, that must have worked," Widget says. "Who doesn't like a good cake analogy?

I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.' 'But you built me dreams instead.

You need to understand your limitations so you can overcome them.

I have tried to let you go and I cannot. I cannot stop thinking of you. I cannot stop dreaming about you.

But you built me dreams instead.

Esse quam videri," Celia says. "To be, rather than to seem.

People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.

Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.

I made a wish on this tree years ago," Marco says. "What did you wish for?" Bailey asks. Marco leans forward and whispers in Bailey's ear. "I wished for her.

I thought a circus environment would be an interesting venue to explore, where you didn't just have one tent with three rings and a show going on but where you could explore different things in different tents.

He forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself.

That's the beauty of it. Have you seen the contraptions these magicians build to accomplish the most mundane feats? They are a bunch of fish covered in feathers trying to convince the public they can fly, I am simply a bird in their midst.

But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.

Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.

I like that "once upon a time" quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based.

Celia, wait,” Marco says, standing but not moving closer to her. “You are breaking my heart. You told me once that I reminded you of your father. That you never wanted to suffer the way your mother did for him, but you are doing exactly that to me. You keep leaving me. You leave me longing for you again and again when I would give anything for you to stay, and it is killing me.” “It has to kill one of us,” Celia says quietly.

Celia." he says without looking up at her, "why do we wind our watch?" "Because everything requires energy," she recites obediently, eyes still focused on her hand. "We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.

Though I have seen a great deal of the sights, traveled a number of the available paths, there are always corners that remain unexplored, doors that remain unopened.

The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.

You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Rêves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus. You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.

The Cloud Maze. “ An Excursion in Dimension A Climb Though the Firmament; There Is No Beginning There Is No End Enter Where You Please Leave When You Wish Have No Fear of Falling

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul

The most difficult thing to read is time. Maybe because it changes so many things.

Is it not that bad to be trapped somewhere, then? Depending on where you're trapped?" "I suppose it depends on how much you like the place you're trapped in," Widget says. "And how much you like whoever you're stuck there with," Poppet adds, kicking his black boot with her white one.

I worry hope will crush me, the way love has so many times before. Are they so different, hope and love? O & E in the same place, half of the other in each word. Both swimming in unknowns. I’ve been through the big changes. These ones should seem easier in comparison, I should be more prepared, but they don’t and I’m not. Sometimes I feel like a broken-wing butterfly, clinging to a window screen. Afraid to let go. Afraid to stay. Wondering how much wing is enough to fly.

Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars.

Misdirection is one of my strengths.

They say it's darkest before the dawn, but it also tend to be quietest, and the quiet lets you hear yourself better.

To be rather than to seem.

At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the clouds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.

I don't think there's anything wrong being a dreamer.

The circus itself is my personal ideal entertainment venue.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

I believe you have my umbrella" he says, almost out of breath but wearing a grin that has too much wolf in it to be properly sheepish.

Have you ever thought about it, about simply leaving? Really, truly thought about it with the intent to follow through and not as a dream or a passing fancy?

I am a fan of magic and fantasy, particularly when it's grounded in reality.

They are enthusiasts, devotees. Addicts. Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent. They seek each other out, these people of such specific like mind. They tell of how they found the circus, how those first few steps were like magic. Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars… When they depart, they shake hands and embrace like old friends, even if they have only just met, and as they go their separate ways they feel less alone than they had before.

Is magic not enough to live for?

Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.

Could you do such things when you were a dancer?' Tara asks her, as Tsukiko pulls a leg up impossibly far over her head. 'I would have had a much busier social calendar if I could,' Mme. Padva replies with a shake of her head.

Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.

And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister's story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead.

I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held.

Love is fickle and fleeting," Tsukiko continues. "It is rarely a solid foundation for decisions to be made upon, in any game.

I have you here, all around me. I sit in the Ice Garden to get a hint of this, this way that you make me feel. I felt it even before I knew who you were, and every time I think it could not possibly get any stronger, it does.

I binge write. I think it's because I started seriously writing by participating in National Novel Writing Month, an online-based challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

It’s said that All Hallows’ Eve is one of the nights when the veil between the worlds is thin - and whether you believe in such things or not, those roaming spirits probably believe in you, or at least acknowledge your existence, considering that it used to be their own. Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright.

She turns her head, Bailey catches her eye, and she smiles at him. Not in the way that one smiles at a random member of the audience when one is in the middle of performing circus tricks with unusually talented kittens but in the way that one smiles when one recognizes someone they have not seen in some time.

Unusual yet beautiful. Provocative while remaining elegant.

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

The night that seemed endless hours before is now slipping through your fingers, ticking by as it falls into the past and pushes you towards the future.

Secrets have power, and that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them.