Quotes from City of Ghosts

“You know I do, aye? Love you right, Chessiebomb.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“People, she was discovering, were like cockroaches: If you allowed one in, more were sure to follow.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“But she never thought about the way Terrible looked, at least not that way. He hadn’t been ugly to her for months; he’d gone from just being a face she was familiar with to being a face she loved to look at, a face that made her….happy. Who gave a shit what anyone else saw when they looked at him, when they saw the crooked, many times broken nose, or the scars, or the jutting brow or thick jaw and heavy muttonchops? She knew what she saw, and that was all that mattered. Knew what was behind those hard dark eyes, and wanted it more than anything.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“How the hell did people do this, this emotion-and-forgiveness thing? How did they stand these feelings? She could barely handle it and she had lovely, necessary, reason-for-living drugs to smooth over the rough spots. How did people do this shit sober?”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Honesty was for those who could afford it, like heating or electricity or a conscience.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Chess lied to herself every day; it was just something she did, like taking her pills or making sure she had a pen in her bag. Little lies, mostly. Insignificant. Of course there were big ones there, too, like telling herself that she was more than just a junkie who got lucky enough to possess a talent not everyone had. That she was alone by choice and that she was not terrified of other people because they couldn’t be trusted, because they carried filth in their minds and pain in their hands and they would smear both all over her given half the chance.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“She knew what she saw, and that was all that mattered. Knew what was behind those hard dark eyes, and wanted it more than anything.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“You let people into your life and you ended up getting hurt. Or hurting them. Either way, the road to pain was paved with other people, and she wanted no part of it anymore”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“She'd never been able to resist temptation - especially an unhealthy one - and at that moment he was another pill, another line; one she needed, one she would die if she couldn't have, and her entire body was already vibrating in anticipation.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“So many answers flew through her mind that she didn't know which to pick, aside from the obvious truth that "my drug dealers enforcer and his rival who I used to fuck" was definitely not it.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Funny how addiction was socially acceptable—even a status symbol—when it made people extroverts rather than introverts”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“So aint you think just causen you in this car now means any damn thing. It aint. He pretending it do, he lying and saying it do, but it aint. Pretend that other dame just he friend, so he say, but aint like it true.

Some churchbitch she is too. Leastaways that what Amy telling me. Amy say she met her once and she aint shit.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Just what she needed. More filth in her soul. Someday, maybe, she would explode from it, someday maybe, every rotten thing that had every been done to her and every rotten thing she’d ever done would erupt from her in a fountain of sewage and sorrow, all those secrets she kept even from herself spilling out and adding to the muck she could never wash off no matter how hard she tried.

She’d never been bound by magic to keep those secrets. Just by her own shame.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Terrible’s eyes narrowed; he gave Chess the kind of look most people reserved for ax murderers. Ax murderers who killed children. And kittens.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Most Debunkers spent their money on actual things, rather than just buying anything they could swallow, smoke or snort. Unlike Chess.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Fuck, she was so sick of herself-herself and her fucking emotional retardation. How did people do this shit all the time, this wanting people, caring about them? How did they stand it, how did they ever get anything done? She was sick of being lost.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“She’d fucked him over hardcore. She’d betrayed him and she’d lied to him, and she knew that as far as he was concerned she’d led him on and used him as well, had consorted with people who wanted to see him dead and given them information to help them make him so. Most of all, she’d hurt him. And if the pain in her chest was anything close to what he’d felt, she was more than willing to admit he deserved to get his own back. Was willing to do more than admit it; was willing to take it, in the hopes he’d eventually decide she’d been punished enough and they could maybe move on.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Oh, who was she kidding? She wasn’t fucking lucky. But hope sprang eternal, for whatever stupid reason.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Aye. Freaky iffen you ask me. But guessing that what Terrible like, aye. What he deserve sneaking off into the bathroom with some rigmutton cunt, leaving me on my alones in the bar, and other men talking to me and saying I got me a date there and he fucking some whore while everyone outside the bathroom hearing them.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Yeah, I lied and I shouldn’t have and it was lousy of me and I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you, I never wanted that, and I wish so bad I could take it all back, okay? But we both know which one of us is lying now and it’s not me. So you call me when you want to actually talk to me and not just yell at me or tell me what a shitty person I am. I already…yeah, I already know that, okay?”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Her sigh felt dragged from the depths of her soul. Great. Working for Bump again.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“She was alive, and she was stuck in this fucking tunnel, and she had just broken a fuck of a hex ward, and now she was going to have to walk through the toad-door into who-the-fuck-knew-what with someone who touched her only under duress. Some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“A promise to the Church is far more important than any other promise. Not just because the Church protects you, but because the Church is always watching you."

- The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 1340”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“You know I do, aye? Love you right, Chessiebomb.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Sure. Focused. Let's totally ignore any possible other avenues and just tunnel-vision our way along. Maybe we'll get lucky and blunder into a Lamaru hangout, right?”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Fuck, she was so sick of herself—herself and her fucking emotional retardation. How did people do this shit all the time, this wanting people, caring about them? How did they stand it, how did they ever get anything done? She”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

“Some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed; in that sense at least, this day was no different from any others.”
― Stacia Kane, quote from City of Ghosts

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“In the old days, farmers would keep a little of their home-made opium for their families, to be used during illnesses, or at harvests and weddings; the rest they would sell to the local nobility, or to pykari merchants from Patna. Back then, a few clumps of poppy were enough to provide for a household's needs, leaving a little over, to be sold: no one was inclined to plant more because of all the work it took to grow poppies - fifteen ploughings of the land and every remaining clod to be built; purchases of manure and constant watering; and after all that, the frenzy of the harvest, each bulb having to be individually nicked, drained and scrapped. Such punishment was bearable when you had a patch or two of poppies - but what sane person would want to multiply these labours when there were better, more useful crops to grow, like wheat, dal, vegetables? But those toothsome winter crops were steadily shrinking in acreage: now the factory's appetite for opium seemed never to be seated. Come the cold weather, the English sahibs would allow little else to be planted; their agents would go from home to home, forcing cash advances on the farmers, making them sign /asámi/ contracts. It was impossible to say no to them: if you refused they would leave their silver hidden in your house, or throw it through a window. It was no use telling the white magistrate that you hadn't accepted the money and your thumbprint was forged: he earned commissions on the oppium adn would never let you off. And, at the end of it, your earnings would come to no more than three-and-a-half sicca rupees, just about enough to pay off your advance.”
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