“Where you go, I shall go; where you die, I shall die, and there will I be buried.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“They said that love was terrifying and tender, wild and sweet, and none of it made any sense.
But now I knew that every mad word was true.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“You deserve all that and more. It made me happy to see you suffer. I would do it all over again if I could.' I realized I was shaking as the words tumbled out of me. 'I would do it again and again. Every night I would torment you and laugh. Do you understand? You are never safe with me.' I drew a shuddering breath, trying to will away the sting of tears.
He opened his eyes and stared up at me as if I were the door out of Arcadia and back to the true sky. 'That's what makes you my favorite.' He reached up and wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. 'Every wicked bit of you.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“Why is he scared of the dark?"
I meant the words for a joke, but Shade nodded seriously. "Like all monsters. Because it reminds him of what he truly is".”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“Knowing the truth is not always a kindness.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“We'll both be foolish," I said, "and vicious and cruel. We will never be safe with each other."
"Don't try too hard to be cheerful." His fingers threaded through mine.
"But we'll pretend we know how to love." I smiled at him. "And someday we'll learn."
And we walked through the gateway together.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“You fought and fought to keep all the cruelty locked up in your head, and for what? None of them ever loved you, because none of them ever knew you”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“If one of us had to die, it ought to be the one with poison in her heart.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“His hands tightened around mine. “I love you,” he said. “I love you more than any other creature, because you are cruel, and kind, and alive. Nyx Triskelion, will you be my wife?”
I knew it was insane to be happy, to feel this desperate exultation at his words. But I felt like I had been waiting all my life to hear them. I had been waiting, all my life, for someone undeceived to love me. And now he did, and it felt like walking into the dazzling sunlight of the Heart of Earth.
Except that the sunlight was false, and his love was real.
It was real.
Very deliberately, I pulled my hands out of his. “You’re a demon,” I said, staring at the ground.
“Most likely.”
“I know what you’ve done.”
“The exciting parts, anyway.”
“And I still don’t know your name.” My hands trembled as I undid my belt, then started to unclasp the brooches. It seemed forever since that first day when I had ripped my bodice open so
easily. “But I know you’re my husband.”
The dress slid down to land on the ground about my feet. Ignifex touched my cheek very gently, as if I was a bird that might be startled into flight. Finally I met his eyes.
“And,” I said. “I suppose I do love you.”
Then he pulled me into his arms.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“Don’t look at the shadows too long or a demon might look back.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“If you start wondering how this house works, you'll likely go mad. That could be amusing, I suppose. Especially if it's the kind of madness that causes you to run naked through the hallways. Do feel free to indulge in that anytime.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“I was not born to be saved.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“I coudn't be kind to him after what he'd done, couldn't be cruel after what I had done”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“I had been waiting, all my life, for someone undeceived to love me.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“He is a monster, I said. Maybe I m a monster to pity him”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“And you would know so much about women, locked up in your castle."
"Locked up with eight wives. And sometimes I make house calls for my bargainers. There's many a lovely woman desperate enough to bargain with me."
This idea had never occurred to me before. "You touch another woman and I'll cut your hands off," I snapped.
He looked delighted. "I thought you were afraid of hurting me.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“I remember the hours I had spent in Father's library, drugging myself with books so I could forget my doom for an hour..”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“I knew it was insane to be happy, to feel this desperate exultation at his words. But I felt like I had been waiting all my life to hear them. I had been waiting, all my life, for someone undeceived to love me. And now he did, and it felt like walking into the dazzling sunlight of the Heart of Earth. Except that the sunlight was false, and his love was real.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“All it had cost me was everything”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“But you know what you are, and what you deserve. You lie to me but not to yourself. That's why I love you.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“The fire roared down upon us. It curled through our hair, then wrapped around our wrists and faces, trying to drag us apart. It seared across my skin, hotter than the Heart of Fire, and yet more painful was how it seared through my mind. The fire burned away my memories, taking back his name and mine, both of my pasts and all of my hopes, the sky and the sparrow and the world itself. I clung to somebody I did not know, could not imagine knowing, but I still knew beyond all doubt that he was mine.
We fell until we had been falling forever and always, and always would continue falling, because nothing existed outside this chaos of fire and shadow.
But I held on to him.
And he held on to me.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“If you desired someone, if he comforted you, if you thought he might leech the poison out of your heart, was that love? Or only desperation?”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“Though mountains melt and oceans burn,
The gifts of love shall still return.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“The Kindly Ones would say it didn't matter. And maybe they were right. We still could have snatched happiness from our tragedy if we had made the right choices, the right wishes. If we had been kinder, braver, purer. If only we had been anything but what we were.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“Most of all, I wanted to forget my mission and lose myself in the embrace of the one person who had ever seen my heart and claimed to love me after.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“You were sent here to die. You were the one that was not needed, was not wanted, and they sent you here because they knew you would never come back.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“I'm your husband. I can wait as long as I please and still have all of you.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“I hope you aren't planning to order me back to bed."
"No, you have far too much crockery at your disposal.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“Have you seen lamplight shine through dusty air, setting the dust motes on fire?” He waved a hand. “Imagine that, spread across the night sky—but ten thousand motes and ten thousand times brighter, glittering like the eyes of all the gods.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
Rosamund Hodge
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“Love’s a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with.”
― Theodore Sturgeon, quote from More Than Human
“New Englanders could be so brusque.”
― Cherise Sinclair, quote from Make Me, Sir
“Women worry too much about how they smell or taste. I assure you, I love to taste a woman’s primal essence on my tongue.” Something melted inside her. He liked it? “Really? You’re not just being polite, are you, Sir?” “No, kitten, when it comes to sex, I don’t have a polite bone in my body.”
― Kallypso Masters, quote from Nobody's Hero
“She was lost to me, a sister who did not love her sister anymore. Such a stupid thing, striking that match.”
― Cathy Marie Buchanan, quote from The Painted Girls
“--while the sun and wind played gently in its spreading branches; the bells of the Donskoy monastery would sometimes float across--tranquil and sad--and I would sit and gaze and listen, and would be filled with a nameless sensation which had everything in it; sorrow and joy, a premonition of the future, and desire, and fear of life.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from First Love
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