Shark Heart Quotes

“Wren saw now how passion was delicate and temporary, a visitor, a feeling that would come and go. Feelings fled under pressure; feelings did not light the darkness. What remained strong in the deep, the hard times, was love as an effort, a doing, a conscious act of will. Soulmates, like her and Lewis, were not theoretical and found. They were tangible, built.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world, but instead, he’d found Wren, a great, strong wind who’d supported his exploration of the sky”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“All the hours he spent theorizing about magic seemed so naive now. The main ingredient in transformation was not magic, it was pain.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Will you let me stand beside you on your plot of earth? We'll tell the weeds to grow tall around our ankles, and when the wind gives us sycamore seeds, we'll raise them as sprouts, seedlings, saplings until they overpower, shade, and nurture us. Our trees will grow for two hand years or more as our union becomes even more unquestionable and strong.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“As Lewis held Wren's hands, he thought of her kindness, her intelligence, her inner beauty. Yet, just as he married these known qualities, he also married her vast unknowns. And she, his.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“...he did not fear death but grief, the ache of being alone and mangled by change. Yet he was not ready to make peace with the end.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Wren no longer sees life as a long, linear ladder with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, she considers how life is like a spiraling trail up a mountain. Each circling lap represents a learning cycle, the same lesson at a slightly higher elevation. Wren realizes she likes to rest as much as she likes to climb. She begins to enjoy the view.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“In the rare hopeful hour, I tell myself this darkness has a purpose: to help me recognize light if I ever find it again.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“The theater hums with presence as everyone in the audience and cast alike remembers that joy and grief are human birthrights, but mostly, being alive, is everything in between.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Plants were probably the most sentient of all living things: rational, bloodless bystanders, witnessing the great horror of it all.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart: A Love Story

“What a privilege it was to mark time with the sun.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“What a tragedy it is, being a woman. I would rather be a million other things.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“What if magic is just mislabeled peace?”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“With electroreception, Lewis hoped to sense her, know her, and love her even thousands of miles away in the ocean. Nothing he read indicated that electroception extended further than a couple yards. But maybe, he thought, maybe if I practiced, I would never really have to say goodbye. When Lewis finally came to bed, he took sleeping Wren’s hand in his and closed his eyes, seeing if he could sense her electrical field. “What… What are you doing?” she asked groggily. “Just seeing what it’s like to love you when I can’t see you.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“The surface of love was a feeling, but beyond this thin layer, there was a fathomless, winding maze of caverns offering many places to see and explore. Wren used to think romantic passion only grew more intense in the depths. But this belief was naive and impractical, a by-product of a certainty-obsessed culture that equates love with longing and views ambivalence as a fatal flaw.

Wren saw now how passion was delicate and temporary, a visitor, a feeling that would come and go. Feelings fled under pressure; feelings did not light the darkness. What remained strong in the deep, the hard times, was love as an effort, a doing, a conscious act of will. Soulmates, like her and Lewis, were not theoretical and found. They were tangible, built.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“As they say in the theater, suspend your disbelief. Otherwise, the reality of this world is very much like yours and mine.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“As their saltwater tears combined with the sea, Lewis finally understood the log line of their love story: He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world, but instead, he'd found Wren, a great, strong wind who supported his exploration of the sky.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“In their innocence, they failed to grasp the labor of losing a partner, how the tasks of simple existence would become logistical feats and one person’s burden.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“I can't look at everything hard enough,' Lewis whispered into the stars again and again. The combination of words belonged to a character he would never play, but in that moment, he felt that the line had been written for him.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“...she realized she didn't want food at all but rather, the feeling of emotional fullness, a hunger that could only be satiated by home, family, and familiarity.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Wren and the Tiny Pregnant Woman shared practical, applied interests like oncoming personal devastation, terrifying sadness, and the experience of free-falling into grief and the unknown.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Angela wasn't old enough to get a driver's license, buy cigarettes, or vote, but she was the perfect age to worship the first guy who said she was important.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Lewis gazed at the moon and then to Wren and once more at the moon and back to Wren, realizing, startlingly, he could not tell the two entities apart.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“The end of the play will ask a real question. Like, is it ever possible to rebuild? Or, after time, is every relationship just a little bit broken?”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world, but instead, he’d found Wren, a great, strong wind who supported his exploration of the sky. “You make everything better than when you found it, especially me. Thank you for a wonderful marriage. I would change nothing, not for anything. And you deserve much more than the idea of me. It would stifle your possibility. When Someone Else comes your way, you have my blessing, my absolute blessing, to begin again. You will be a wonderful mother and wife.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Would you like to be a family?" Lewis asked slowly, not because he was unsure but because he had nothing to offer her but his self and his time.

"A family?"

"Yes."

"Like, brother and sister?" asked Margaret.

"You and me."

"Family," Margaret said again, this time through tears. "I thought it would never happen to me.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Lewis thought all children came into the world knowing some truth about magic and God. He thought the journey of adulthood was to forget about these things and then partake in the path to remembering. Lewis said one of the purposes of art was to point people toward what they already knew. Now Wren really needed to know: Where is the art here, Lewis? And what path?”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Maybe life has no ceiling, no floors, no walls, and we're free-falling from the moment we're born, lying to each other, agreeing to make invented ideas important, to numb ourselves from the secret."

"What's the secret?"

"Maybe what happens between birth and death isn't as precious as we think.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“Lewis's mutation was like the weather; they could prepare, but they could not control a thing.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“It was their duty, he'd say, to deliver the message: Faith lived in the darkest rooms.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart