Yumi And The Nightmare Painter Quotes
"I watched it rain the blood of a dying god. I crawled through tar that took the faces of the people I had loved. It took them. Their blood became black ink."
"Grandfather spoke of the nightmares. He doesn’t know why he was spared. He stares at nothing when he tells of those days spent crawling in the darkness, that terror from the sky, until he found another voice. They met and huddled, weeping together, clinging to one another—although they had never met before that day, they were suddenly brothers. Because they were real."
"It will take me. It creeps under the barrier. It knows I am here."
"You must remember that you are a resource to the land. Like the water of the steamwell. Like the plants, the sunlight, and the spirits. If you do not take care of yourself, you will squander the great position and opportunity you have been given."
"We don’t get to decide what is food and what is not. (Yes, exceptions exist. Don’t be pedantic. When you pass those marbles, we’re all going to laugh.) But we absolutely get to decide what counts as art."
"Let’s pretend that I’m not a spirit like you think I am. How bad would that be?"
"It is more than calmness. It is an utter rejection of all emotion, sensation, and individuality. You often start by fixating on something rhythmic, like your breathing or the deliberate stretching and relaxing of a muscle."
"You must control even those enjoyable thoughts better when you are experienced at meditation."
"The yoki-hijo is not a child, nor is she an adult. The yoki-hijo is a manifestation of the will of the spirits. Her entire existence is service."
"Control leads to focus and focus to accomplishment."
"A yoki-hijo does not break composure. A yoki-hijo remains controlled, calm, and deliberate."
"If I grow lax, then people die, Painter. Do you understand that?"
"I am nothing. Merely a vessel for their will."
"I’m talking to a spirit. Please, um, ignore me."
"Art is about feelings and emotion. It’s about letting them escape, so they can be shared. It’s about capturing a truth about yourself. Like you’re ripping a hole in your chest and exposing your soul."
"Life would be chaos without proper boundaries and guidelines."
"I find it telling. They all understood. For one living the life of a yoki-hijo, breakdowns were basically inevitable. You just had to hide them as best you could."
"That sky felt like it would swallow her, but that was somehow the least of it."
"It’s not about what I want. It can never be about what I want. This is what must be."
"I’ve only been one for a few years now, so I’m an authority—and it’s really quite nice. Except for the sexism. But it’s hard to blame that on being a woman instead of on, you know, morons."
"I am a concept. A thing, owned by society. I would be better as a machine, like that box that shows stories in your room. If I didn’t think, if I didn’t feel, I’d do my job far better."
"It’s the mixing of math and art. Plus the human aspect—the concentration, the satisfaction, the emotion."
"A week ago, I could barely get three rocks on top of one another."
"He couldn’t have said what made him want to avoid this place. Perhaps it was the way that Akane had adopted Yumi so easily. Reminded him of how easily he’d been dropped."
"These weren’t his friends anymore. This feeling he felt? It was false."
"I heard of the unfortunate nature of your plight, even all the way in Torio City. So we have come to bless you."
"Human beings are limited in their capacity, and it is highly inefficient that we must depend on them for the needs of our society."
"I forbid you to find irony in this situation, Painter."
"Annoying people is basically a religion to you."
"We’re here to rescue you from your books, Yumi."
"If you don’t relax now and then, you’re going to stress yourself to the point that your mind rots."
"It seems you have not fully recovered from your malady last week. Perhaps you should lie down, then rise again, starting this day over."
"You told me I don’t need advanced techniques."
"I only stare when I see something too beautiful for my eyes to take in at once."
"Sometimes, the more you think about it, the better an ending like this seems."
"It’s time for me to go out. Hunting nightmares."
"Knowing how to paint is different from being able to do it in a stressful situation."
"What good is theory when you need to feed yourself?"
"It was time, at long last, for her to try being a nightmare painter."
"I wish there were a formula, Design. If there were, I could fix this."
"Cold noodles with ice for hot days, warm noodles with broth on cool ones."
"I suppose we can solve the problem no matter if we’re from different times or different planets. Nothing changes except..."
"Why couldn’t she form the words? Why didn’t she dare speak them?"
"It’s going to end poorly, isn’t it? There’s no way for it to work out."
"Her life was not her own. Her life was service."
"Whatever else happened, this was an accomplishment."
"Painter, when you paint nightmares, it’s your thought—your perception of them—that causes them to transform."
"You cannot let yourself be happy, because happiness is far, far too dangerous."
"I wonder what that’s like, but I don’t wonder it enough to try it."
"You might have lost everything. Every hope, every dream. But I think losing your friends was the worst of all."
"For centuries it kept these extremely dangerous souls captive not by force of arm, but by pure force of mundanity."
"Their keepers were the souls of those they had once known."
"Each night, during this time of slumber, some of these servants would break free. They’d stalk the land, ghosts without memories, on a prowling search for meaning. For understanding. For life."
"Machines don’t plan. They don’t think about the future."
"Muscle memory. Skills that sank in deep, infusing her soul, like rum in a cake."
"It wasn’t the boasts, the pretending, the superficial actions. It was the fact that when he could have just headed home to relax, he’d instead turned back."
"You’ll have to forgive Liyun for the near-murder of someone she loved and was sworn to protect. She wasn’t feeling like herself at the time."
"All art is meaningless without those to admire it."
"This was her meditation. This was her purpose. This was creation."
"We are the line between their fears and their flesh."
"Yumi was literally the best who had ever lived. With twenty or more lifetimes’ worth of practice."
"Because art is, and always has been, about what it does to us. To the one shaping it and the one experiencing it."
"The nightmares were people. He needed to treat them as such."
"It doesn’t care what it made. All it did was keep going, maintaining its hold on the spirits for power."
"Because sometimes, things you want to be real feel real."