“A dream dirty and bruised is better than no dream at all.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“I am one of billions. I am stardust gathered fleetingly into form. I will be ungathered. The stardust will go on to be other things someday and I will be free.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a new way of living—one without massacres and torn throats and bonfires of the fallen, without revenants or bastard armies or children ripped from their mothers’ arms to take their turn in the killing and dying.
Once, the lovers lay entwined in the moon’s secret temple and dreamed of a world that was a like a jewel-box without a jewel—a paradise waiting for them to find it and fill it with their happiness.
This was not that world.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil held a wishbone between them.
And its snap split the world in two.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“It was brave," countered Issa. "It was rare. It was love, and it was beautiful.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Dead souls dream only of death. Small dreams for small men. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master, or death is”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“So," he called to her back, "Just out of curiosity, you know, purely conversation and all, at what age will you be entertaining offers of marriage?"
"You think it'll be so easy?" she called back over her shoulder. "No way. There will be tasks. Like in a fairy tale."
"Sounds dangerous."
"Very, so think twice."
"No need," he said. "You're worth it.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Nothing made you feel so useless as another person's grief.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Your heart is not wrong. Your heart is your strength. You don't have to be ashamed.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“As long as you're alive, there's always a chance things will get better."
"Or worse," said Liraz.
"Yes," he conceded. "Usually worse."
Hazael cut in. "My sister, Sunshine, and my brother, Light. You two should rally the ranks. You'll have us killing ourselves by morning.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Mercy, she had discovered, made mad alchemy: a drop of it could dilute a lake of hate.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Once upon a time, a girl lived in a sandcastle, making monsters to send through a hole in the sky.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Imagine if [Juliet] woke up and he was still alive, but..." She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. "But [Romeo] had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“You have only to begin, Lir. Mercy breeds mercy as slaughter breeds slaughter. We can’t expect the world to be better than we make it.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Brimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Daughter of my heart,' was the message Brimstone sent just for Karou. She wanted to cry again right here in the court, thinking of it. 'Twice-daughter, my joy. Your dream is my dream, and your name is true. You are all of our hope.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Be your own place of safety, she told herself, straightening. No crossbar in the world could protect her from what lay ahead, and neither could a tiny knife ticked in her boot - though there her tiny knife would most certainly remain - and neither could a man, not even Akiva. She had to be her own strength, complete unto herself.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Once upon a time, the sky knew the weight of angel armies on the move, and the wind blew infernal with the fire of their wings.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Where am I and doing what?
You might well ask.
Freaky chick, you say?
You can't imagine.
I am priestess of a sandcastle
in a land of dust and starlight.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“It wasn't disgust she felt for Karou, not anymore; it was indignation. Incredulity. A man like Akiva crosses worlds to find you, infiltrates the enemy capital just to dance with you, bends heaven and hell to avenge your death, saves your comrade and kin from torture and death, and you send him off looking gut-punched, diminished, carved hollow?”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Anyone who would wear all white like that clearly had issues. Just looking at him made her wish she had a paintball gun, but hell, you couldn’t pack for every eventuality.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“It was interesting the way a small hate could grow inside a big hate and take it over.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“What can a soldier do when mercy is treason, and he is alone in it?”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“It was funny, she thought, but her smile turned wistful because she had nobody to tell.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“It was one of those dreams that invade the space between seconds, proving sleep has its own physics- where time shrinks and swells, lifetimes unspool in a blink, and cities burn to ash in a mere flutter of lashes.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Light coursed through Karou and darkness chased it-burning through her, chilling her, shimmer and shadow, ice and fire, blood and starlight, rushing, roaring, filling her.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Take up a weapon and you become an instrument with as pure a purpose as the weapon itself: to find arteries and open them, limbs and sever them; to take what is alive and deliver it unto death.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“Let's just get this out of the way so I can relax. Karou, your friends aren't going to eat us, are they?"
No, Karou thought. They are not. She whispered back, "I don't think so. But try not to look delicious, okay?”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“One world on its own is a strange enough seethe of coiling, unknowable veins of intention and chance, but two? Where two worlds mingle breath through rips in the sky, the strange becomes stranger, and many things may come to pass that few imaginations could encompass.”
― Laini Taylor, quote from Days of Blood & Starlight
“She dropped her coat on the back of a chair and crept quietly up to Jay’s room. She did her best not to wake him as she pulled the door closed behind her. She watched him sleep, stretched out on his back, feeling herself coming back to life in his presence.
“What are you doing?” he mumbled without opening his eyes.
Violet startled, feeling like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. Like when they were little and they were busted for looking at a dirty magazine one of the other kids brought to school.
Jay rolled onto his side and squinted one eye open at Violet, grinning. “Come over here,” he growled, lifting the corner of his sheet up, inviting her in. He looked rumpled and messy and alluring.
Violet slipped off her shoes and climbed in beside him. He wrapped his arm around her back, pulling her close. His breath was warm, his body warmer, and she felt herself thawing for the first time since she’d stepped out into the shipyard that morning. Even the heat blasting inside her car on the way home hadn’t helped.
She tucked her feet between his legs.
“What are you doing here so early?” His voice was rough from sleep but it sounded like soft velvet. He stroked her back lazily. “Are you feeling better today?”
Neither question really needed an answer; they were just Jay’s way of letting her know he’d been worried about her.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered as she let herself get comfortable against him. She’d been cold and tired, and now that she was warm again she thought she might actually be able to fall asleep, right there in his arms.
He rested his chin against the top of her head. “You didn’t,” he assured her. “I was already awake.”
Violet sighed. It felt so good to be here. It was the first time she’d felt comfortable since she’d gone to Seattle yesterday with Chelsea. Jay made her feel safe—among other things—and she needed that right now.
She closed her eyes; they were gritty and raw from lack of sleep. She breathed deeply, inhaling him, and relaxing as she sank further into him . . . and into the pillow beneath her head.
She fell asleep like that, wrapped in warmth.
Wrapped in Jay.”
― Kimberly Derting, quote from Desires of the Dead
“The unchallenged assumption is that humans may use animals for their own purposes, and they may raise and kill them to satisfy their preference for a diet containing animal flesh.”
― Peter Singer, quote from Animal Liberation
“That’s how fossil hunting is: It takes over, like a hunger, and nothing else matters but what you find. And even when you find it, you still start looking again the next minute, because there might be something even better waiting.”
― Tracy Chevalier, quote from Remarkable Creatures
“over the years i have discovered a surprising but simple truth about young ladies and it is this: the more beautiful their faces, the less delicate their thoughts.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from My Uncle Oswald
“never depend on the efforts of others to push back the darkness.”
― Matthew Woodring Stover, quote from Heroes Die
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