Top 180 Richard Siken Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 4 of 4

151. “You swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. I want it back.”

— Richard Siken

152. “You had expected something else, anything else.”

— Richard Siken

153. “These are the dreams we should be having.”

— Richard Siken

154. “This time everyone has the best intentions. You have cancer.”

— Richard Siken

155. “There is no way to make this story interesting.”

— Richard Siken

156. “This dream going on with all of us in it.”

— Richard Siken

157. “I cut off my head and threw it in the sky.”

— Richard Siken

158. “Explaining will get us nowhere.”

— Richard Siken

159. “We were in the Safeway parking lot. I couldn’t find my cigarettes. You said, “Hurry up!” but I was worried there would be a hold-up and we would be stuck in a hostage situation, hiding behind the frozen meats, with nothing to smoke for hours. You said “Don’t be silly,” so I followed you into the store. We were thumping the melons when I heard somebody say, “Nobody move!” I leaned over and whispered in your ear, “I told you so.”

— Richard Siken

160. “There should be just one safe place in the world, I mean this world. People get hurt here.”

— Richard Siken

161. “Knot the tie and go to work. Unknot the tie and go to sleep.”

— Richard Siken

162. “I had four dreams in a row where you were burned, about to burn, or still on fire.”

— Richard Siken

163. “And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired.”

— Richard Siken

164. “We can do anything. It’s not because our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we struggle with.”

— Richard Siken

165. “Accidents never happen when the room is empty.”

— Richard Siken

166. “Willpower, gunpowder, concussive thunder. Pink, orange, red, orange dreaming red.”

— Richard Siken

167. “Logic is boring because it works. Being unreasonable is exciting.”

— Richard Siken

168. “What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once. Add a second light and you get a second darkness, it’s only fair. He is looking at the wall and I am looking at his looking. Difficult thing, to be scrutinized so long. I find parts that overlap with mine and light them up in clays and creams, yellow music singing pink, the flicker of his mouth a purple rust.”

— Richard Siken

169. “You were very beautiful.”

— Richard Siken

170. “A man found a door and hung it on the wall.”

— Richard Siken

171. “History throws its shadow over the beginning.”

— Richard Siken

172. “I put on my best shirt because the painting looked so bad. Color bleeds, so make it work for you. Gravity pulls, so make it work for you. Rubbing your feet at night or clutching your stomach in the morning. It was illegible – no single line of sight, too many angles of approach, smoke in the distance. It made no sense. When you have nothing to say, set something on fire. A blurry landscape is useless.”

— Richard Siken

173. “The body swerves in the service of the mind, which is evidence of the mind but not actual proof.”

— Richard Siken

174. “Do you want it? Do you want anything I have?”

— Richard Siken

175. “Something has happened in the paint tonight and it is worth keeping.”

— Richard Siken

176. “It isn’t over yet, it’s just begun.”

— Richard Siken

177. “People fall down and stay down.”

— Richard Siken

178. “You do the math, you expect the trouble.”

— Richard Siken

179. “The world doesn’t know what to do with my love. Because it isn’t used to being loved. It’s a framework problem.”

— Richard Siken

180. “Forget about his insides, his plumbing and his furnaces, put a thing in his hand and be done with it. No one wants to know what’s in his head. It should be enough. To make something beautiful should be enough. It isn’t. It should be.”

— Richard Siken

181. “The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.”

— Richard Siken

182. “The trees in wind, the streetlights on, the click and flash of cigarettes being smoked on the lawn, and just a little kiss before we say goodnight. It spins like a wheel inside you: green-yellow, green-blue, green beautiful green. It’s simple: it isn’t over, it’s just begun. It’s green. It’s still green.”

— Richard Siken

183. “Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it.”

— Richard Siken

184. “Disappear and save everyone the bother of a dark suit.”

— Richard Siken

185. “There’s a thing in my stomach about this. A simple thing. The last rung.”

— Richard Siken

186. “There’s only one thing I want, don’t make me say it.”

— Richard Siken