“If I am a sword, I am a sword made of glass, and I feel myself beginning to shatter.”
“No one is born evil, just like no one is born alone. They become that way, through choice and circumstance.”
“Anyone, anything, can betray anyone. Even your own heart.”
“No heart can ever be truly understood. Not even your own.”
“No one is born a monster. But I wish some people were. It would make it easier to hate them, to kill them, to forget their dead faces.”
“We seem weak because we want to.”
“Strange, my enemies know me best, and my family doesn’t know me at all.”
“I fear being alone more than anything else. So why do I do this? Why do I push away the people I love? What is so very wrong with me?
I don’t know.
And I don’t know how to make it stop.”
“Every single thing I did, you stood behind me,” I say. “If I’m turning into a monster, then so are you.”
“Love blinds.”
“It isn't hard to let people die when their deaths give life to something else.”
“The thing with heat is, no matter how cold you are, no matter how much you need warmth, it always, eventually, becomes too much.”
“I am a weapon made of flesh, a sword covered in skin. I was born to kill a king, to end a reign of terror before it can truly begin.”
“Don’t lie to a liar, and Maven is the grandest liar of all.”
“Attend to your own fate, Mare Barrow.” “And that is?” “To rise. And rise alone.”
“But I can’t shake the feeling that, while they stand with me, there’s no one beside me. Even with an army at my back, I am still alone.”
“Fire and lightning raised Maven up, and fire and lightning will bring him down.”
“No matter how much I might want to feel him, I cannot. I must keep my eyes ahead, and away from the fire of a fallen prince. I must freeze my heart to the one person who insists on setting it ablaze.”
“I’m starting to think you like prisons,” he says, idling knocking his knuckles against the wall. “And that you have the worst taste in men.”
“One dark night I spilled my secrets to him, on a road thick with summer heat. I was the girl who tried to steal his money then. Now, winter looms, and I’m the girl who stole his life.”
“I suppose I should get used to being alone too. Not in the world, but in here. In my heart. Part”
“We can’t choose who we love. I wish, more than anything, that we could.”
“It’s not something you can control, Mare,” he replies, still standing so far away. “We can’t choose who we love. I wish, more than anything, that we could.” I feel cracked open. My skin still runs hot from Cal’s embrace, remembering the feel of him only moments ago. But in the deepest part of me, in spite of every fiber of my being, I think beyond the clearing, to ice-colored eyes, an empty promise, and a kiss aboard a boat.”
“Mare of the Stilts died the day she fell onto a lightning shield. Mareena, the lost Silver princess, died in the Bowl of Bones. And I don’t know what new person opened her eyes on the Undertrain. I only know what she has been and what she has lost, and the weight of it is almost crushing.”
“I must freeze my heart to the one person who insists on setting it ablaze. Winding”
“I’m safer than I’ve been in days, surrounded by the people I love most, and yet I’ve never wanted to cry more. For them, I hold back. I curl inward and bleed alone, inside, where no one else can see.”
“Maven lies as easily as he breathes, and his mother holds his leash but not his heart.”
“You’ll find I’m remarkably good at giving orders, and particularly awful at following them.”
“You came here with so many more followers, but you lost the ones you left with.”
“Friend Tim shakes hands with Perfect Specimen of Mankind. Will never wash right hand again.”
“Kelley-"You know that story ends horribly, right?"
Sonny-"What did Shakepeare know? He probably would have rewritten that bit if he'd thought about it.”
“Her virtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently interesting to deserve description.”
“If you can’t hurt the ones who hurt you, sometimes hurting anyone will do. All”
“I told him the truth, that I loved him and didn't regret anything about our lives together. But do we ever 'tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God' as my father used to say, to those we love? Or even to ourselves? Don't even the best and most fortunate of lives hint at other possibilities, at a different kind of sweetness and, yes, bitterness too? Isn't this why we can't help feeling cheated, even when we know we haven't been?”
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