“When you want to make an impression and you think you’ve gone far enough, go a little further. Always leave them wondering if you’re just a little bit crazy, and people will never fuck with you again.”
“The closer you got to anything beautiful, the less beautiful it became. Allure was in the mystery, not the appearance.”
“Those who are patient, plan. And beware the man with a plan.”
“The shy ones tend to be the baddest after all.”
“The only way we find out what we’re capable of is by getting into a little trouble.”
“Well, it's like you're saving your energy for something. Holding back. But it doesn't make any sense. Life is one-way, and there is no return trip. What are you waiting for?”
“It’s just you, Little Monster. Own it or it will own you.”
“Own it. Don’t apologize for who you are. Own it. You can’t win if you don’t show up, right?”
“Run all you want, Little Monster,” he said, sounding like a threat. “We’re faster.”
“Redefine normal. None of us know the full measure of our power until we start pushing our boundaries and pressing our luck, and the more we do, the less we care what others think. The freedom feels too good.”
“Our scrapes and bruises, tattoos, scars, smiles, and wrinkles told our stories,”
“And from Michael—as well as Damon, Will, and Kai—I learned to breathe fire. I learned to walk as if the path were carved for me and me alone, and to treat the world as if it should know I was coming.”
“She needed a hot shower, a warm bed, and me.”
“Things done in the dark hours of night, behind closed doors, or in the heat of the moment looked a lot different in the morning, out in the open, and with a clear head.”
“Own who you are,” he commanded. “And don’t apologize. Do you understand? Own it or it
will own you.”
“They were untouchable, fascinating, and nothing they ever did was wrong. I wanted that. I wanted to look down at the sky.”
“I’ll look out for my little brother’s girlfriend and keep her nice and safe in the light of day and not violate the fuck out of her in the dark.”
“The most valuable lesson anyone learns in life should be learned as early as possible. That you don’t have to live in the reality someone else had invented. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Ever.”
“Her fucking eyes, going from defiant to mischievous to hurt to on fire, and then finally, to broken.”
“Chess would teach me strategy, fencing would teach me human nature and self-preservation, and dancing would teach me my body. All necessary for a well-rounded person.”
“There were dark deeds and bad seeds, but who cared if the house was falling apart as long as it was pretty, right?”
“I’m not playing your games. You were wrong.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “You want to know what I’ve learned? I don’t win by playing your games. I win by making you play mine.”
“It's odd to see how no one is really human to us until we talk to them and realize there's barley any separation between who we are and who they are.”
“What do you treasure? Is anything precious to you?”
“Yeah, they’re just matches,” I continued, my voice growing thick with tears. “And memories and smells and sounds and butterflies in my stomach every time I heard the car door slam outside, telling me that he was home. A thousand dreams of all the places I’d have adventures someday.”
“Most of the matchbooks and little boxes were made of paper, and even if the matches dried out, the containers were split, torn, and shriveled. The damp cardboard dripped with water, discolored and broken.”
“I didn’t feel so lost when he was around. It was the only time I didn’t feel lost.”
“They’re hopes and wishes and reminders and all the times I smiled, knowing he’d remembered me while he was gone.”
“When I thought about it, there actually weren’t a lot of things or people in the world that I loved. Why had I left them here?”
“You’re a horny little bitch,” Damon seethed. “You almost fucked him right here in front of us.”
“I asked him if he thought “there” was better than “here.” “Not better,” he said. “I mean, my great-great-grandpap got his leg shot off. But I feel like it was bigger somehow.” Hawkins flipped through pages of Civil War pictures. “At work, I mix dyes and put them in a machine. I’m thirty-six and I’ve spent almost half my life in Dye House No. 1. I make eight dollars sixty-one cents an hour, which is okay, ’cept everyone says the plant will close and go to China.” He put the book back on the shelf. “I just feel like the South has been given a bum deal ever since that War.”
“The reactions of others were actually another lesson she'd learned about change. When change happened to an individual, it happened to everyone around her - sometimes in ways she wished for, though sometimes in ways she wished against.”
“Yeah, go ahead and get the forbidden garden comment out of your system. And no matter what witty snake joke you're considering? Trust me, I've heard it.”
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”
“Where, Bredon asked himself, did the money come from that was to be spent so variously and so lavishly? If this hell’s-dance of spending and saving were to stop for a moment, what would happen? If all the advertising in the world were to shut down tomorrow, would people still go on buying more soap, eating more apples, giving their children more vitamins, roughage, milk, olive oil, scooters and laxatives, learning more languages by gramophone, hearing more virtuosos by radio, re-decorating their houses, refreshing themselves with more non-alcoholic thirst-quenchers, cooking more new, appetizing dishes, affording themselves that little extra touch which means so much? Or would the whole desperate whirligig slow down, and the exhausted public relapse upon plain grub and elbow-grease? He did not know. Like all rich men, he had never before paid any attention to advertisements. He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion. Phantasmagoria”
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