“But hoping," he said, "is how the impossible can be possible after all.”
“It is a dangerous thing to unbelieve something only because it frightens you.”
“The easiest way to steal something, is for it to be given willingly.”
“Sometimes your heart is the only thing worth listening to.”
“When pleased, I beat like a drum. When sad, I break like glass. Once stolen, I can never be taken back. What am I?”
“A heart, once stolen, can never be taken back.”
“Fascinating, isn't it, how often heroic and foolish turn out to be one and the same.”
“Perhaps we know each other in the future and you’re only remembering backward.”
“To be all right implies an impossible phase. We hope for mostly right on the best of our days.”
“Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”
“Her mother sneered. “Then you are a fool.”
“Good. I’ve become rather fond of fools.”
“Stuff and nonsense. Nonsense and stuff and much of a muchness and nonsense all over again. We are all mad here, don't you know?”
“These things do not happen in dreams, dear girl,' he said, vanishing up to his neck. 'They happen only in nightmares.'
His head spiralled and he was gone.”
“Now mine eyes see the heart that once we did search for, and I fear this heart shall be mended, nevermore.”
“You have my heart, Jest. I don't know if you deserve it or not. I can't tell if you're a hero or a villain, but it doesn't seem to matter. Either way, my heart is yours.”
“Mind my words, Cheshire, I will have you banished from this kingdom if you tempt me."
"An empty threat from an empty girl."
She rounded on him, teeth flashing. "I am not empty. I am full to the brim with murder and revenge. I am overflowing and I do not think you wish for me to overflow on to you."
"There was a time" – Cheshire yawned – "when you overflowed with whimsy and icing sugar. I liked that Catherine better.”
“Is this what’s going to make you happy?’
‘How different everything could have been, if you had thought to ask me that before.”
“Are you here for a reason, Cheshire?
Why, yes, I would enjoy a cup of tea. I take mine with lots of cream, and no tea. Thank you.”
“Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.
Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater,
Had a pet and couldn’t feed her;
Caught a maid who had meant well
–What became of her, no one can tell”
“Oh no,” she murmured, her smile thawing, falling, carried away with the undeniable, inevitable, impossible truth of it. She was falling in love with him.”
“You know as well as I that you're going to break at least one heart before this is over, and I want nothing more to do with you.”
“This was why she enjoyed baking. A good dessert could make her feel like she'd created joy at the tips of her fingers. Suddenly, the people around the table were no longer strangers. They were friends and confidantes, and she was sharing with them her magic.”
“You want to hear a riddle, you say? I know a very good one. It begins, why is a raven like a writing desk?’
She lifted her chin. ‘Have you gone mad, Hatta? I can’t seem to tell.’
‘They are both so full of poetry, you see. Darkness and whimsy, nightmares and song.”
“We will all greet fate, on the other side.”
“For the murder of Jest, the court joker of Hearts, I sentence this man to death.’
She spoke without feeling, unburdened by love or dreams or the pain of a broken heart. It was a new day in Hearts, and she was the Queen.
‘Off with his head”
“Walk straight ahead
Listen to no one
Trust not in the walls or doorways
For they will mislead
And close behind you
As you walk through
The forest, not knowing
Where you’ve come from
Or where you’re going …
If anywhere at all.”
“Going to the outhouse was an ordeal, a wade through shoulder-high drifts, forced to dig to make forward progress.”
“...evident in every small act of kindness. It was love as a verb, as Rachel used to say. Love that made me more patient, more loyal, and stronger. Love that made me feel more complete than I had ever felt in my glamorous, Jimmy Choo-filled past.”
“When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God's son? The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed - whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions - is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and ignominy of the cross -- how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?”
“You’re a pervert,” I said, fighting a grin.
Roth shrugged. “Of all the things someone could call me, that’s hardly the worst.”
“And probably the most true,”
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