Top 200 Kate Elizabeth Russell Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 2 of 5

51. “It’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

52. “The world has a vested interest in keeping you helpless.” He says as a culture we treat victimhood as an extension of childhood. So when a woman chooses victimhood, she is therefore freed from personal responsibility, which then compels others to take care of her, which is why once a woman chooses victimhood, she will continue to choose it again and again.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

53. “We’re born, we live, we die, he says and the choices we make in the middle, all those things we agonize over day after day, none of those matter in the end.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

54. “I haven’t been gaslighted into senselessness.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

55. “That seems the likely ending to this love story: me dropping everything and doing anything, devoted as a dog, as he takes and takes and takes.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

56. “Like find my inner child? Oh god. Kill me.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

57. “Afsluiten om weer verder te kunnen’ klinkt als van een klif afspringen, klinkt als doodgaan.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

58. “When we’re together,” he says, “it feels as though the dark things inside me rise to the surface and brush against the dark things inside you.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

59. “She didn’t understand the horror of watching your body star in something your mind didn’t agree to.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

60. “I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.” “I know,” she says. “Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?” I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide-open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

61. “I loved the math of it, three times my age, how easy it was to imagine three of me fitting inside him: one of me curled around his brain, another around his heart, the third turned to liquid and sliding through his veins.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

62. “It’s a truth so blatant and bitter, not even I can sweeten it into something easier to swallow. He only wanted to make sure I’d stay quiet. He used me again.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

63. “I remember my college roommate Bridget saying, after I first told her about Strane, Your life is like a movie. She didn’t understand the horror of watching your body star in something your mind didn’t agree to.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

64. “I check my reflection in every window, a two-second glimpse of my hair fanning out from my face, possibly beautiful, though it seems equally possible I might be ugly.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

65. “I’ll remember everything as hard as I can. I’ll live inside these memories until I can see him again.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

66. “She stands over me as I say I’m sad, I’m so sad, small, simple words, the only ones that make sense as I clutch my chest like a child and point to where it hurts.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

67. “I wonder if she would be hurt if I said I don’t really feel anything at all towards her anymore. That I can’t remember why losing her friendship had felt like losing the world, or why that friendship seemed so profound, never to be repeated. Now, it only strikes me as embarrassing, like any other outgrown phase.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

68. “Another cycle – drink, smoke, swallow. I want to be low enough to slip beneath the surface and swim without needing air. He’s the only person who ever understood that desire. Not to die, but to already be dead. I remember trying to explain it to Ira. Just a glimpse was enough to make him worry, and worry never leads to anything good. Worry makes people butt in where they don’t belong. Any time I’ve ever heard the words “Vanessa, I worry about you,” my life has been blown apart.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

69. “I walked into his classroom. I existed. I was born.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

70. “I try to hide how happy this makes me feel by rolling my eyes, but his words break my chest wide open and leave me helpless. There’s nothing stopping him from reaching in and grabbing whatever he wants. I’m special. I’m special. I’m special.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

71. “I need it to be a love story. I need it to be that.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

72. “Flirting is supposed to be fun and this is too heavy for fun.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

73. “He touched me first, said he wanted to kiss me, told me he loved me. Every first step was taken by him. I don’t feel forced, and I know I have the power to say no, but that isn’t the same as being in charge. But maybe he has to believe that. Maybe there’s a whole list of things he has to believe.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

74. “I can’t lose the thing I’ve held on to for so long. You know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.” “I know,” she says. “Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

75. “He’ll never meet you,” I say. It’s a hard truth, carrying within it grief and joy. Jo opens her eyes, doesn’t lift her head as she watches me. She’s constantly taking in my face and tone, noticing everything about me. When I start to drift away, her tail thumps against the couch cushion, like a drumbeat, a heartbeat, a rhythm of grounding. You’re here, she says. You’re here. You’re here.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

76. “I’m unhuman now. Untethered.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

77. “The line of Polaroids stretches across my living room, the strawberry pajamas draped over the radiator. I wonder what level of crazy I’ve reached and how much further I could go, how many more steps until I become a woman who boards up the windows to live uninterrupted in the filth of her past.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

78. “You can’t do that.” she says. “You don’t get to change the facts to suit the story you want to tell.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

79. “He traces road maps of blue veins on my skin, talks about how hungry I make him, that he’d eat me if he could. I wordlessly offer him my arm. Go ahead. He gives it only a soft-mouthed bite, but I would probably let him tear me apart. I’d let him do anything.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

80. “In the photos, ferns brush my thighs and sunlight streams through my hair, making me look like a wood nymph, like Persephone wandering her meadow, waiting for Hades to come.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

81. “This, I think, is the cost of telling, even in the guise of fiction. Once you do, it’s the only thing about you anyone will ever care about. It defines you whether you want it to or not.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

82. “Worry makes people butt in where they don’t belong.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

83. “He’s always going to be old. He has to be. That’s the only way I can stay young and dripping with beauty.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

84. “My parents stare straight ahead, their anger and grief palpable enough to taste. I open my mouth to let it all in and swallow it whole, where deep in my belly it turns into blame.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

85. “I open my mouth to let it all in and swallow it whole, where deep in my belly it turns into blame.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

86. “Does that feel good? Does that make me happy? My eyelids flutter as his hands move up my thigh. He lives to please me. Even if we end up apart, right now, he worships me – his dark Vanessa. That should be enough. I’m lucky to have this, to be so loved.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

87. “I don’t like the idea of him thinking there are things I don’t understand.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

88. “It doesn’t matter that my skin crawls from touching him.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

89. “When people are angry, they’re looking for a fight,” she says. “You act submissive, they back off.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

90. “So many of my memories from back then are shadowy, incomplete.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

91. “You don’t get to change the facts to suit the story you want to tell.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

92. “I feel so strongly toward you,” he says. “Sometimes I worry I’ll drop dead from it. It’s stronger than anything I’ve ever felt for any woman. It’s not even in the same universe of feeling.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

93. “Aren’t you going to ask where I’ve been?” I say. She stares at me, into me. She sees everything. “If I did,” she says, “would you tell me the truth?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

94. “I initially sought out the novel because a musician I adored named it as his favorite in Rolling Stone, but even if I’d never read that interview, I would have found my way to Lolita. Because it’s more than a book; it’s an unavoidable archetype baked into our culture.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

95. “Most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

96. “I tell Ruby I feel like I’ve moved from grieving Strane to grieving myself. My own death. “Part of you died along with him,” she says. “That seems normal.” “No, not part,” I say. “All of me. Everything about me leads back to him. If I cut out the poison, nothing will be left.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

97. “Het moet een liefdesverhaal blijven. Want als het geen liefdesverhaal is, wat is het dan?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

98. “It’s just so typical, you know? That way he’d berate himself to make you feel sorry for him.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

99. “I haven’t seen him since Christmas, when he told me about Taylor Birch. Over the months there’s been a change in him, his face somehow altered. I search until I find it: his glasses. They’re frameless now, nearly invisible. A pang hits my heart at the thought of him changing something so integral without telling me.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

100. “The whole time, I’d been discarded, unwanted.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell