Top 200 Kate Elizabeth Russell Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “It doesn’t matter that my skin crawls from touching him.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

102. “He keeps calling, but I’m out of reach. I’m a speckled seal swimming past the breakers, a seabird with a wingspan so strong I can fly for miles. I’m the new moon, hidden and safe from him, from everyone.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

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

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

104. “Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

105. “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

106. “He’s the only person who ever understood that desire. Not to die, but to already be dead.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

107. “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

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

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

109. “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

110. “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.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

111. “I can’t wrap my head around it, the deceit that requires, the cruelty.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

112. “Maybe that’s what this has always been about – not wanting these men but wanting to be them.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

113. “While they walk across campus, earthbound and ordinary, I soar, trailing a maple-red comet tail.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

114. “He says that by believing our lives have endless possibilities, we stave off the horrifying truth that to live is merely to move forward through time while an internal clock counts down to a final, fatal moment.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

115. “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

116. “Everywhere makes me antsy to be someplace else.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

117. “I’m tired of him asking me for this, his insatiable need for reassurance. No, I’m not angry. Yes, I forgive you. Yes, I want this. No, I don’t think you’re a monster.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

118. “But those years aren’t lost. They’ve just been neglected for a while. You can recover yourself.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

119. “Someone so stuck in her own brain, she turns unwilling bystanders into ghosts.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

120. “Why did you come back if I hurt you?” he asks. “It didn’t feel finished,” I say. “I still felt tied to you.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

121. “What would she do? It’s a question that’s more like a maze, one I can get lost in at the sight of any teenage girl. If her teacher tried to touch her, would she react the way she should, shove his hand away and flee? Or would she let her body go limp until he was through? I try sometimes to imagine another girl doing what I did – sink into the pleasure of it, crave it, build her life around it – but I can’t. My brain hits a dead end, the maze swallowed by darkness. Unthinkable. Unspeakable.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

122. “You were so brave then, more a warrior than a girl. You were my own Joan of Arc, refusing to give in even as the flames licked your feet. Does that bravery exist in you still?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

123. “You decide what we do.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

124. “It isn’t a question but a realization, like he’s taken a step backward and can now see the doubt that’s begun to sidle up alongside the limits of my loyalty.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

125. “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

126. “I think back to third grade, how it felt to bring home a report card with a teacher’s note scribbled across the bottom: Vanessa is very advanced, seems like she’s eight years old going on thirty. I’m not sure I was ever really a kid at all.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

127. “I barely opened my mouth and brought us to the brink of disaster.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

128. “I can see myself at the head of my own classroom, telling my own students what to read and write. Maybe that’s what this has always been about – not wanting these men but wanting to be them.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

129. “After a while, she gives up repeating the same lines, knowing there comes a point when they no longer matter, that what I need isn’t absolution but to hold myself accountable before a witness.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

130. “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

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

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

132. “A few days ago he asked what I like to eat, said he wanted to have my favorites on hand, and he shows me the three pints of expensive ice cream in the freezer, a six-pack of Cherry Coke in the fridge, two big bags of potato chips on the counter.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

133. “I swallow those words instead. Maybe somewhere in my belly they’ll take root and grow.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

134. “She opens my bottom desk drawer and gasps. It’s full of trash: crumpled papers, food wrappers, used tissues, a blackened banana peel. I’d filled it in a panic a few weeks ago right before room inspections and forgotten to clean it out.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

135. “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

136. “What conclusion is there to draw besides the obvious? He is Humbert, and I am Delores.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

137. “Putting in the Seed,” and tells us to read this one.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

138. “I know to stay away from any books or movies set in a boarding school, but then I’ll be blindsided by something as benign as a reference to maple trees, or the feeling of flannel against my skin. “I sound like I’m crazy,” I say.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

139. “That means something.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

140. “I’ve got a good head on my shoulders despite all this. I can take care of myself. Look at me. I’m okay. I’m fine.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

141. “He’ll never meet you,” I say. It’s a hard truth, carrying within it grief and joy.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

142. “I hang up my work suit, take off my makeup, smoke a bowl in bed, and turn off the light. Self-control.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

143. “First love is so special,” she says. “You’ll never forget it.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

144. “I go on and on, parroting his arguments, the part of him left inside me suddenly risen and fully alive.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

145. “What about you? Look at you. Aren’t you ok? You certainly look ok. You look beautiful.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

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

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

147. “Ruby’s far off voice asks me where I have gone, but she knows that it’s the truth that has spooked me, the expanse of it, the starkness. It offers nowhere to hide.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

148. “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

149. “I’m sorry, Vanessa,” he says. “Though I know that might be a useless thing to hear. I’m just so sorry.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

150. “Pathetically in love with you.” As soon as he says this, I become someone somebody else is in love with, and not just some dumb boy my own age but a man who has already lived an entire life, who has done and seen so much and still thinks I’m worthy of his love. I feel forced over a threshold, thrust out of my ordinary life into a place where it’s possible for grown men to be so pathetically in love with me they fall at my feet.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell