Kate Alice Marshall > Quotes

“What do you wear when you go to meet a ghost?”
― Kate Alice Marshall, Rules for Vanishing

“To survive you need to learn to hold contradictory things in your head at the same time. I am going to die; I am going to live. There is nothing to fear; be wary of everything.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, I Am Still Alive

“Sometimes it seemed like the only thing I’d ever been good at was surviving being broken. I didn’t know how to be whole. So any time I felt like I was healing, I found a way to break myself again.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“There is a wilderness in little girls. We could not contain it. It made magic of the rain and a temple of the forest.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Little Lucy, dressed in white
Gave her mother such a fright
Walked into the woods one day
Where she went no one can say
Down a road that no one found
Or are her bones sunk in the ground?
How many steps did Lucy take?
One, two, there, four...”
― Kate Alice Marshall, Rules for Vanishing

“That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it?” Ethan said. “You gather all the evidence you can, use your brain, weigh character and past actions. But the final inch of it—that’s faith. Trust means believing in someone. It’s not just a conclusion. It’s a choice.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“What happened in the dark?”
― Kate Alice Marshall, Rules for Vanishing

“If they'd known the truth about Persephone, they would have thought we were strange, wicked little beasts — and we were. What little girl isn't?”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Do you want to know where Lucy went?
She went to play the game.
You can play, too.
Find a partner.
Find a key.
Find the road.
You have two days.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, Rules for Vanishing

“I cannot tell if I am lying.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, Rules for Vanishing

“We aren't safe at all.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, Rules for Vanishing

“I’ve spent hours paging through that notebook again and again, but no secrets have unlocked themselves for me. I’ve gone to the place in the forest where Lucy Callow disappeared, in daylight and in the dark, on the full moon, in a white dress, whatever any legend says. Because I don’t believe in ghosts, but I want to. I know Becca didn’t run away. That leaves one possibility and one impossibility, and I long for the impossible. Because if she isn’t dead, if she’s only been taken, she can be brought back.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, Rules For Vanishing

“That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it?… You gather all the evidence you can, use your brain, weigh character and past actions. But the final inch of it – that’s faith. Trust means believing in someone. It’s not just a conclusion. It’s a choice.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“pain balanced by pain.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Nothing good comes from digging up old trouble.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“There is a wilderness in little girls. We could not contain it. It made magic of the rain and a temple of the forest. We raced down narrow trails, hair flying wind-wild behind us, and pretended that the slender spruce and hemlock were still the ancient woods that industry had chewed down to splinters. We made ourselves into warriors, into queens, into goddesses.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“The flesh does not acknowledge linear time, a therapist had once told me. The past is written alongside the present on our skins.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“We knew the world was cruel and dirty and dull, and it was all so brutally unfair that we refused to accept it. There was magic in the world. We only had to find it.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“I’d known from the start that he’d sought me out because my sad story was written on my face and he was hoping to borrow it.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Of course I believe,” I whispered to the dark, but there was no one to answer.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“They told the story again and again, until they thought they owned it. We tried to forget. We didn’t tell the story. Not the real one. Not ever.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Persephone had made it out of the forest at last.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“The meaning of belief has changed over the ages. We tend to think of it as a matter of fact. I believe this thing is true; I hold it to be factual. But once, it meant something different, a meaning that lingers when we say I believe in you. It is not a statement of factual existence, but one of faith and loyalty. To believe is to hold dear, to cherish, to claim as a truth more fundamental than fact.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“You have to learn to assume that you will fail and assume that you will succeed at the same time. This is the only way to stay smart and careful and stay moving and motivated. You cannot give up and you cannot let up.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, I Am Still Alive

“You’re a really terrible father,” I said, matter-of-fact. “You know that, right?” “Of course I know it. I’m dumb but I’m not stupid,” he said. “It’s not like you’re winning Daughter of the Year prizes yourself.” “Oh, fuck off.” “Same to you.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Persistence in the face of repeated failure is an admirable trait in a scientist, even if it is absurdly irritating on a personal level.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, Our Last Echoes

“Once that fear was in your body, that knowledge that someone wanted you dead, it never entirely left.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“You couldn’t let someone in without it breaking you, but you could choose the way you broke.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“one of his coworkers keeps tagging him in joint selfies at “work events” with a borderline psychotic number of emojis.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, Rules For Vanishing

“I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t stop. I was going to see this through to the end, even if it destroyed me.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods