Paula Stokes Quotes

You know what I regret the most?” Trinity says, her voice just above a whisper.tI don’t answer. All I can think about is how crappy it is that my fourteen-year-old sister already has regrets.
Paula Stokes
Our “protective bubbles”—our houses, our cars, our friends, our online identities—might make us feel secure, but most of it’s just an illusion. It’s easy to get hurt, just like it’s easy to hurt other people.
Paula Stokes
There are so many different ways for someone to say your name. I’m not sure I ever realized that before I met Jesse. Prior to him, it was just Rose calling out to me with love and affection or Gideon relaying his quiet approval or disapproval. Crisp, clear notes. When Jesse says my name, it’s a chord, a mash-up of several intense emotions all reflected in two syllables.
Paula Stokes
The truth never hurts worse than finding out someone you care about lied to you.
Paula Stokes
But if you want him, you might have to fight for him." I let my head fall to the tabletop. "For the love of all that is dead and Chinese, please, no more fighting. This army needs a break.
Paula Stokes
Standing up for yourself is about more than flinging barbed-wire insults around. Its about picking your battles, knowing when to fight, knowing exactly what and who is worth fighting for.
Paula Stokes
Jesse and I might as well be caught in a snow globe. Tonight is just a single perfect moment trapped in glass. Tomorrow our protective bubble will be shattered.
Paula Stokes
I can’t seem to wipe away the blood. I rub my hands against my nightgown, but traces of the red remain, staining the lines of my palms and the crescents beneath my fingernails. I wipe harder, gathering and bunching the soft cotton inside my fists. The fabric has been slit up the center and for a moment I worry that I’ve been cut, that maybe the blood is my own. I try to ask what’s happening, but there’s a mask over my mouth and nose. Suddenly it hits me—I’m in an ambulance.I don’t remember how I got here.
Paula Stokes
I dream of a small room and a man with one eye. Blood seeps like scarlet tears from his empty socket. I turn away and the room becomes a hallway that becomes a stairway that becomes a roof. The wind tugs at my body; the sky tries to wrap me in stars. Below me, a gazebo glows with red light. A line of black cars crawls like cockroaches through the streets. An air conditioner exhaust fan chitters angrily near the roof’s edge, one of its blades bent just enough to scrape against the side of the casing. For a second I let the wind push me close enough to the fan’s razor- sharp blades that a lock of my hair gets snipped and sent out into the night. As it twists and flutters toward the gazebo, I think about just letting go, letting the breeze carry my body into the whirling blades, the wind scattering pieces of me throughout the city. Blood and flesh seeping into the cracked pavement. Flowers blooming wherever I land.
Paula Stokes
I am not warm. That is why my sister chose the name Winter for me.
Paula Stokes
I’ve read so many stories online about how tragedy brings people together, how hard times encourage bravery and sacrifice, how a crisis can turn ordinary folks into heroes. But what about the opposite, when something horrible happens and it strips us bare, exposing weaknesses we didn’t even know we had. What about when tragedy makes people worse?
Paula Stokes
No,” Gideon says. “No guns. The most dangerous weapon you have is your brain. Give someone a gun and they tend to quit using it.
Paula Stokes
Guilt is basically one of my superpowers. It’s been programmed into me from the moment I was old enough to know what it was.
Paula Stokes
Who would vandalize a doghouse? I ask."Cats?" Bee suggests.
Paula Stokes
If you’ve never been close to death, life probably seems pretty solid. The truth is, it can be destroyed in an instant, like a photograph. One moment your world is slick and shiny. But then the Universe crumples everything into a ball. And even if you don’t get crushed, if you fight to straighten things out, your life will never be the same again.
Paula Stokes
We wind our way up the spiral staircase and then down the long hallway that leads to his room. I feel almost like I’m watching the scene unfold from outside my body. My fingers are interlocked with his as he pulls me toward a moment that’s going to change everything. We are ten steps away. Five steps. I can’t decide. But then I do.
Paula Stokes
Killing someone is different in practice than it is in theory. There are factors you can’t prepare for, feelings in the moment where you’ll question everything you thought you knew about yourself, other feelings that might follow you long after the deed is done.
Paula Stokes
My name is Winter Kim. Today I killed a man. Soon I hope to kill another.
Paula Stokes
Not sure how you can get them to him without looking like a crazy stalker chick," Micah says."You think I'm a crazy stalker chick?""You're using an ancient war manual to try to win back your boyfriend. I think you're a girl who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants," he says. "Hey, at least you're committed.
Paula Stokes
Nothing stings quite like an unanswered text message.
Paula Stokes
Some people just want to be part of the story, even if it’s a story that’s completely fabricated.
Paula Stokes
I don’t think you can just choose to believe in God. You either do or you don’t, and no matter what camp you’re in, it would take something life-changing to truly lead you into the other one.
Paula Stokes
Gideon and I sit there in the dark, wordless for a while, only our ragged breaths disturbing the silence. Memories of my sister overwhelm me—I see her impish grin as she leans over me at the orphanage, tugging on my hair until I wake up. I remember us climbing up to the roof as kids, sitting cross-legged next to the herbs and vegetables our caretakers were growing while we read the English books Rose had “borrowed” from her class at school. And then there was L.A.—all of our hope for a better life so quickly crushed, but Rose never let despair overtake her. She was there after every single night to hold me until the pain went away. And later, when I got numb to it all, she still made a point of holding me, of promising me that one day things would be different.
Paula Stokes
When you share feelings with someone, or secrets, it adds a layer of complexity to even the simplest things.
Paula Stokes
When you care about someone, you can’t just turn that off because you learn they betrayed you.
Paula Stokes
If you asked me whether I was the type of person who liked trying new things or preferred sticking with what was familiar, I would have told you I was the second girl. The if –it-aint-broke-don’t-fix-it girl. I also would have told you plays were lame. It suddenly occurs to me that I don’t seem to know very much about…me. It’s a weird feeling, like maybe a stranger is inhabiting my body. Or maybe a stranger was, and I kicked her out.
Paula Stokes
Sometimes being poor means having to choose between your principles and your survival.
Paula Stokes
It’s not right that some people have so much and others have so little.
Paula Stokes
Once I accepted the fact that I was bad luck, I shied away from group activities. And groups. And activities. I started spending a lot of time in my room, tucked under my covers reading books. There’s only so much damage a book can do, and I wasn’t worried about hurting myself. Accidentally hurting yourself is way better than hurting other people.Sure, I got lonely for a while. But getting invited to slumber parties just wasn’t worth the stress of wondering if I might accidentally burn down the house with my flat iron or be the only survivor of a freak sleepover massacre. And loneliness is just like everything else—if you endure it long enough, you get used to it.
Paula Stokes
There’s nothing abnormal about loneliness.
Paula Stokes
How do you make me smile when it seems like there’s nothing in the whole world to smile about?
Paula Stokes
Sobs force their way out of my throat. I feel like I’m trapped in a disaster movie where everything is shriveling into darkness and ash. Sunflowers are being uprooted. Puppies are being trampled. Whole cities are crumbling to dust.
Paula Stokes
Time doesn’t heal anything. It’s like drinking. The best it can do is help you forget, if you’re lucky.
Paula Stokes
I remember the big gaping hole left by my dad’s absence in the months following the accident. He’d been the one who went to my parent-teacher conferences, the one who taught me mnemonics to memorize the Great Lakes and the Earth’s atmospheres. Whenever I did something silly, my dad always made me feel better by telling me a story from the firehouse about someone who had done something even sillier. Sometimes you don’t realize all the things a person does for you until they aren’t there to do them anymore.
Paula Stokes
Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost was completely full of shit.
Paula Stokes
To us, reality is just raw footage: Unclear. Desultory. Too shocking or not quite shocking enough. It’s ironic that making something more real involves making it less real, but Gideon always says people don’t want real. They want the idea of real, which involves production.
Paula Stokes
Emotions I’ve been working hard to hold back all summer start to spill out of me as I pull Elliott’s mouth toward my own. I’m so eager and impatient that our noses bump and teeth knock together before our lips slide into place. The frigid water is still lapping at my legs, but I can’t feel it anymore. My entire body is flush with heat, with desire. If it weren’t for the faintest hint of dance music from the clearing, I’d think that the two of us were completely alone.I wish the two of us were completely alone.
Paula Stokes
The world is full of holes and uneven seams, wrinkled places that you can’t make smooth, no matter how hard you try.
Paula Stokes
Some people think they can just decree that everything will be fine. The world doesn’t work like that. I’m not sure the world gives a crap about anyone’s promises, well-meaning or otherwise. Sometimes the Universe just takes what it wants.
Paula Stokes
I remember a time when all I wanted was a gun and to learn how to use it. I thought a gun would make me feel safe. I thought a gun would make me feel powerful. But right now I just feel . . . heavy. Like I live in this world of death and destruction and I’ll never escape alive.
Paula Stokes
You have more power than you think. Be careful what you do with it.
Paula Stokes
Rose lived the same life I did, but she doesn’t have PTSD. No bad dreams, no missing memories. Sometimes I’m jealous that she seems to deal with everything better than I do. But then I’ll catch her with this hollow look in her eyes and think maybe she just disguises everything for my benefit.Maybe she’s broken on the inside too.
Paula Stokes
Jesse stirs again. This time his fingers twitch. As much as I want to see him open his eyes, I can’t be here for that. It’ll make leaving him too hard. I turn toward the doorway and I’m outside in the main room of the ICU when I hear his weakened voice say, “Winter?”I hurry back to the waiting area. Hopefully he’ll think he dreamed me. Maybe he did. Sometimes I feel like I’m not even real anymore
Paula Stokes
To me, Mother Nature isn't nearly as scary as human nature.
Paula Stokes
I go back for seconds and thirds and fourths and fifths, when it’s good. Just not if it means some guy gets to put a leash on me.
Paula Stokes
We’re like magnets, you know. Only I’m spinning, so I keep pulling you in and then pushing you away. I like you, but then you hurt me, so I run. I like you, but then something makes things feel impossible, so I turn away. And you. You’re so constant. Your orientation never wavers. You feel what you feel and you want what you want without hesitation or doubt. God, I envy that. I feel like if someone stripped away my hesitation and doubt that there’d be nothing left.
Paula Stokes
I think about the way Baz teased me earlier, how he wanted to know what it felt like to have someone who would do anything for me. Maybe it sounds comforting to know there is a person out there who would risk his life to protect you—a person who would back off when you asked and then come to you when you changed your mind. Especially when that person is as kind and decent as Jesse. The truth is, it’s terrifying. It’s just one more opportunity for me to be a monster.
Paula Stokes
The world needs more beautiful things.
Paula Stokes
I get it. Traveling halfway across the world to run into the boy you grew up with, getting back together after years apart—that’s an epic fucking fairytale. I don’t blame you for being seduced by it. I guess I just thought what we had was better. You know, because it was real.
Paula Stokes
I laugh as an unfamiliar feeling envelops me. I think it might be happiness.
Paula Stokes
Monsters don’t get happy endings.
Paula Stokes
Maybe I could dole out the truth in tiny pieces that, once assembled, would make a picture that resembled a reality in which I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Paula Stokes
The truth doesn't get you very far on the streets, or in a group home, or even in high school. That's probably why the idea of Liars, Inc. appealed to me. Everybody lies. You might as well get paid for it.
Paula Stokes