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Kij Johnson Quotes

Cats have a sort of game they play when they meet. A player alternates between watching the strange cat and ignoring her, grooming or examining everything around herself - a dead leaf, a cloud - with complete

Cats have a sort of game they play when they meet. A player alternates between watching the strange cat and ignoring her, grooming or examining everything around herself - a dead leaf, a cloud - with complete absorption. It is almost accidental how the two cats approach, a sidelong step and then the sitting again. This often ends in a flurry of spitting and slashing claws, too fast to see clearly, and then one or the other (or both) of the cats leap out of range. The game can have one exchange or many - and is not so different from the first meetings of women.

Kij Johnson
Cat, Player, Clouds

Happiness is the pleasantest of emotions; because of this, it is the most dangerous. Having once felt happiness, one will do anything to maintain it, and losing it, one will grieve.

Kij Johnson
Grieving, Losing, Emotion
Kij Johnson (2001). “The Fox Woman”, p.180, Macmillan

Waiting required a future to wait for: a falsehood. I know now that there is only now. I remember things that happened months (or what is years?) ago: old -worn-out nows. The future happens, but it is always shaped from a series of nows.

Kij Johnson
Years, Waiting, Months

Because if something does go wrong, you'll need what you're feeling to matter, to someone somewhere, anyway.

Kij Johnson
Feelings, Doe, Needs
Kij Johnson (2012). “At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories”, p.236, Small Beer Press

Adventures are what happens when an event is flawed, a mark of imperfection.

Kij Johnson
Adventure, Imperfection, Events

I feel strangely free at such times. To behave properly is to be always courteous, always clever, and subtle and elegant. But now, when I am so alone, I do not have to be any of these things. For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs of others, by their dreams or expectations or sensibilities. But I am also lonely. With no one to shape me, who stands here, watching the moon, or the stars, or the clouds?

Kij Johnson
Dream, Lonely, Stars
Kij Johnson (2001). “The Fox Woman”, p.57, Macmillan

We ascribe meanings because it is our nature to do so..We can no more see a thing without searching for a meaning than we can see a snag in a robe without pulling on the loose thread.

Kij Johnson
Thread, Robes, Pulling

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