“Plan B?' Ivy said. 'What is plan B?'
Jenks reddened. 'Grab the fish and run like hell,' he muttered, and I almost giggled.”
“As the joke goes, you don’t have to be faster than the wolf chasing you, just faster than everyone else running away.”
“Tagged by a whiny little vamp. Rache, take this sword and stick it in me. Just go and stick it in me. I'm a back-drafted, crumpled-winged, dust-caked, dew-assed excuse of a backup. Worthless as a pixy condom. Taken down by my own partner. Just tape my ass shut and let me fart out my mouth.”
“A witch, a vampire, and a pixy walk into a bar, I thought as I led the way into the Squirrel’s End. It was early, and the sun had yet to set when the door swung shut behind Jenks, sealing us in the warm air smelling faintly of smoke. Immediately Nick yanked it open to come in behind us. And there’s the punch line.”
“One person can't hold anything, but two can have the world...”
“Jenks enthusiastically leaned against the counter and opened the box. Bypassing the plastic knife, he broke off about a third of it and took a huge bite. Ivy watched, appalled, and I shrugged. His mouth moving as he hummed, Jenks finished unpacking the sacks. I was half dead, Ivy was whoring herself to keep me safe, but Jenks was okay as long as he had chocolate.”
“Sure, he had a wife and fifty-four kids, but he looked like a college freshman. A yummy college freshman majoring in Oh-my-god-I-gotta-get-me-some-of-that.”
“Jenks: “I can’t even pix anyone. I sweat now instead of dusting, did you know that? I’ve got water coming off me instead of dust. What the hell can I do with sweat? Rub up against someone and make them puke in disgust? I’ve seen you sweat, and it’s not pretty. I don’t even want to think about sex, two sweaty bodies pressed against each other like that? Disgusting. Talk about birth control—it’s no wonder you only have a handful of kids.”
“His right ear still held both studs, and I wondered who had the missing earring. I would have asked, but was afraid he’d tell me Ivy had it.”
“I'd never seen a man who could outshop me, but Jenks was a master.”
“I hate it when she tabs a line," Ivy whispered to Kisten in the corner. "You ever see anything freakier than that?" "You should see the face she makes when she—"
"Shut up, Kist!" I exclaimed, my eyes flashing open to find him grinning at me.”
“Tagged by a whiny little vamp," he said gesturing. "Rache, take this sword and stick it in me. Just go and stick it in me. I'm a back-drafted, crumpled-winged, dust-caked, dew-assed excuse of a backup. Worthless as a pixy condom. Taken down by my own partner. Just tape my ass shut and let me fart out my mouth.”
“Damn it all to Disneyland! Where’s crap for brains?”
“she had given me a piece of what made her life sane.”
“You listen to me, and listen good!" she shouted, shocking me. "I am not evil because I have a thousand years of demon smut on my soul!" she exclaimed, the tips of her hair trembling and her face flushed. "Every time you disturb reality, nature has to balance it out. The black on your soul isn't evil, it's a promise to make up for what you have done. It's a mark, not a death sentence. And you can get rid of it given time."
"Ceri, I'm sorry," I fumbled, but she wasn't listening.
"You're an ignorant, foolish, stupid witch," she berated, and I cringed, my grip tightening on the copper spell pot and feeling the anger from her like a whip. "Are you saying because I carry the stink of demon magic, that I'm a bad person?"
"No..." I wedged in.
"That God will show no pity?" she said, green eyes flashing. "That because I made one mistake in fear that led to a thousand more that I will burn in hell?"
"No. Ceri -" I took a step forward.
"My soul is black," she said, her fear showing in her suddenly pale cheeks. "I'll never be rid of it all before I die, but it won't be because I'm a bad person but because I was a frightened one.”
“Come on, Jenks,” he said, moving him into the hallway. “I’ve got some clothes you can put on. Falling down is a lot more comfortable when you have something between your ass and the carpet.”
“So much for playing nice.Tired, I let my eyes shut while they argued, hoping I didn’t die in the interim and make the problem moot. I wasn’t ever going to get my water. Ever.”
“My eyes widened at the ball of orange fluff squeezing out from under the counter, blinking and stretching.
I looked again, not believing.
“It’s a cat,” I said, winning the Pulitzer prize for incredible intellect.”
“Under the disguise amulet, Jenks looked very different with black hair and a darker complexion. He had his new aviator jacket on over the T-shirt he had bought in the previous store, making him a sexy, leggy, hunk o’ pixy ass in jeans. No wonder he had fifty-four kids and Matalina smiled like Mona Lisa.”
“It’s a cat.
Boy, you couldn’t slip anything past me tonight.”
“There is black. There is white. Gray is a cowardly excuse to mix our wants with our needs.”
“Good God,” I whispered, sitting on the van’s cot and looking at my legs, horrified. They were hairy—not wolf hairy, but an I-couldn’t-find-my-razor-the-last-six-months hairy. Utterly grossed out, I took a peek at my armpit, jerking away. Oh, that’s just…nasty.”
“Married pixy, I told myself, forcing my eyes back to the shelf of ceramic animals. Fifty-four kids. Beautiful wife, sweet as sugar, who would kill me in my sleep while apologizing for it.”
“He grinned. “That’s because pixies are ever-after. We’re magic, baby. Just ask Matalina.”
“Though no one had been buried here for almost thirty years, the grass was mown by yours truly. I felt a tidy graveyard made a happy graveyard.”
“Jenks made a move to follow, probably forgetting he didn’t have wings anymore. He leaned forward and fell to the floor, face first. “Jenks!” I shouted when he hit with a dull smack and started swearing.”
“Ah, Jenks? It’s not a lake, it’s a friggin’ freshwater ocean. Did you see the size of the tanker going under the bridge when we came into town? The wake from it could tip us. I’m not canoeing it unless your name is Pocahontas.”
“And as far as Piscary is concerned, he can burn in hell—if his soul hadn’t already evaporated.”
“Can we get back to how we’re going to kill Nick? And what’s this about a dead body? You’d better start talking quick, Ivy, ’cause I’m not going to play hide-and-seek with a dead guy in my trunk. I did that in college, and I’m not going to do it again.” A smile quirked Ivy’s mouth.
“Really?” she asked, and I flushed.”
“Ivy had once said that sharing blood was a way to show deep affection, loyalty, and friendship. I felt that way about her, but what she wanted from me was so far from what I understood that I was afraid. She wanted to share with me something so complex and intangible that the shallow emotional vocabulary of human and witch didn’t have the words or cultural background to define it. She was waiting for me to figure it out. And I lumped it all with sex because I didn’t understand.”
“Yet even as the wind stirs your petals, flowers fall. My flowers are eternal, my songs live forever. I lift them in offering; I, a singer. I cast them to the wind, I spill them. The flowers become gold, they come to dwell inside the palace of eternity.”
“And he left me to dreams that were anything but sweet.”
“Prayer is not appointed for the furnishing of God with the knowledge of what we need, but is designed as a confession to Him of our sense of need.”
“So why bother investing in one’s memory in an age of externalized memories? The best answer I can give is the one I received unwittingly from EP, whose memory had been so completely lost that he could not place himself in time or space, or relative to other people. That is: How we perceive the world and how we act in it are products of how and what we remember. We’re all just a bundle of habits shaped by our memories. And to the extent that we control our lives, we do so by gradually altering those habits, which is to say the networks of our memories. No lasting joke, invention, insight, or work of art was ever produced by an external memory. Not yet, at least. Our ability to find humor in the world, to make connections between previously unconnected notions, to create new ideas, to share in a common culture: All these essentially human acts depend on memory. Now more than ever, as the role of memory in our culture erodes at a faster pace than ever before, we need to cultivate our ability to remember. Our memories make us who we are. They are the seat of our values and source of our character.”
“We can begin the restructuring of thought by declaring legitimate what we have denied for so long. Lets us declare Nature to be legitimate. The notion of illegal plants is obnoxious and ridiculous in the first place.”
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.