“She was asleep. In my car.
I stood next to the passenger side for a minute, looking down at her. The sun made her skin seem translucent and bloodless. For a moment, it didn't matter why I was falling in love with her. Just that I was.”
“By lunchtime, the glitter was flaking off my mask. Three pearls dropped off and rolled down the tiled hallway.”
“I held up my hands. 'I thought you could use a punching bag.' See, this is me, the new and improved Nick Pardee, available to girlfriends and crazy people in their time of need.”
“And just like that she was crying.
I felt a little like That Guy who holds a baby at arm's length because he's afraid it's going to pee on him.”
“Girl surrounded by flowers
Technicolor kiss
For all the night's lengthy hours
I'll miss...”
“I grinned, and a burst of shocked laughter shoved out of me. I'd done it! I'd beaten that bitch, and could see again. I'd won. With only my blood.
I climbed to my feet, cradling my throbbing hand against my stomach, and looked out over the cemetery.
The first real thing I saw was Silla, stumbling toward me. Her hands left scarlet prints on every headstone she touched.”
“[We] stared at each other. It was intensely surreal. Four people in a country kitchen, plotting bloody magic. With a psycho, body-snatching murderer stalking us through flocks of birds.”
“I looked back at Eric. I hated that his eyes were closed. Like Josephine wasn't really paying attention to me. But she had so many other eyes. Rat eyes. Fox eyes. Crow eyes. "Josephine. Tell me why you want the spell book. Why does any of that matter if all we ever need is blood?"
"You want to talk philosophy, Silla? Right now?" Eric's eyes snapped open and his fingers twitched.”
“When I arrived at the graveyard, Silla and her brother were sitting together snacking on cookies. They both wore jeans and sweaters and had blood on their foreheads. Like a gruesome splotch jerking you out of an otherwise pastoral scene. That happened to be a cemetery. Okay, it was all pretty gruesome.”
“We three just stared. I thought of Macbeth's witches huddled around their cauldron. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags. What is't you do?
A deed without a name.
We were as quiet as the gravestones around us.”
“As Mab explains to Will why using magic has to hurt...."Think about guns. If it hurt you to shoot a gun, don't you think people would think harder about when and where and why they did it?”
“I thought about ... our kind being killed, but I am not concerned. I have real power - no one could keep me chained, because my blood can transform iron into water. I could walk through walls if I needed, and now - now I know I can throw my mind into another's, and how easy, then, would it be to unlock any cage? We are invincible, Philip and I. Like unto God. Or the Devil.”
“Water be wine,” I said, not thinking and distracted by the surge of magic. “Tears of the heavens, become fruit of the vine.”
I felt more than saw Silla and Reese hesitate.
But I kept going. “Water be wine. Water be wine. Blood from my body, the power is mine. Water be wine.”
With a silent clap of energy, the entire bowl of water transformed into dark wine.”
“We never know what we can be or do until the need is there and we are tested by it.”
“what a fascinating mix a hospital can be of people in a huge hurry and people too slow to get out of their way.”
“Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.”
“I do love a good tree. There it stands so strong and sturdy, and yet so beautiful, a very type of the best sort of man. How proudly it lifts its bare head to the winter storms, and with what a full heart it rejoices when the spring has come again! How grand its voice is, too, when it talks with the wind: a thousand aeolian harps cannot equal the beauty of the sighing of a great tree in leaf. All day it points to the sunshine and all night to the stars, and thus passionless, and yet full of life, it endures through the centuries, come storm, come shine, drawing its sustenance from the cool bosom of its mother earth, and as the slow years roll by, learning the great mysteries of growth and of decay. And so on and on through generations, outliving individuals, customs, dynasties -- all save the landscape it adorns and human nature -- till the appointed day when the wind wins the long battle and rejoices over a reclaimed space, or decay puts the last stroke to his fungus-fingered work. Ah, one should always think twice before one cuts down a tree!”
“Everybody's gotta die sometime. But until then we've still got fifty-some odd years to go, and a lot to think about while we're living those fifty years, and I'll just come right out and say it: that's even more tiring than living five thousand years thinking about nothing. Don't you think?”
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