“I can't give you the white picket fence, and if I did, you'd set it on fire.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“He leaned his head to me, his neck so close to my lips, I felt the heat coming off his skin. His breath was warm against my ear. His voice was a ragged snarl. "I miss you."
This wasn't happening.
"I worry about you." He dipped his head and looked into my eyes. "I worry something stupid will happen and I won't be there and you'll be gone. I worry we won't ever get a chance and it's driving me out of my skull."
No, no, no, no.........
We stared at each other. The tiny space between us felt too hot. Muscles bulged on his naked frame. He looked feral.
Mad gold eyes stared into mine. "Do you miss me, Kate?"
I closed my eyes trying to shut him out. I could lie then we would be back to square one. Nothing would be resolved. I'd still be alone, hating him and wanting him.
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me once. "Do you miss me?"
I took the plunge. "Yes.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“The phone rang. I picked it up.
“Are you sitting down?” Curran's voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Click.
I listened to the disconnect signal. If he wanted me to sit, then I'd stand. I got up. The chair got up with me and I ended up bent over my desk, with the chair stuck to my butt. I grabbed the edge of the chair and tried to pull it off.
It remained stuck.
I would murder him. Slowly. And I'd enjoy every second of it.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“If you come, you better come in force because I will kill every single one of you. My hand won't shake, my aim won't falter. My face will be the last thing you'll see before you die." I jammed my knife into the table and walked out.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“Just wait until he figures out I shut him out of his slut hut.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“You slept with Curran and you didn’t tell me? I’m your best friend.”
“It didn’t come up.”
“How disappointing for you.”
Ha-ha. “That’s not what I meant.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“you might want to decide fast. We live in a dangerous world. If you see a chance to be happy, you have to fight for it, so later you have no regrets.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“He bared his teeth in a happy feral grin. My own personal psycho.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“Are you out of your mind?"
It's not polite to lie to your best friend. "It's a possibility.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“I gave him my hard stare. “You're a control freak and I fight all authority. And you want us to mate?”
A wicked spark lit his eyes. “Many, many times.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“Is that a lion with horns and a pitchfork?"
"Yep."
"Is he carrying the moon on his pitchfork?"
"Nope it's a pie.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“How was I supposed to know that you let two little bears hurt you, Goldilocks?"
"Ah, yes, that mouth. I missed it. All mine now.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“I just had to stay cool. Zen. No punching in the face. Punching would not be Zen.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“I surveyed the rest of the Council and looked directly at Mahon. “Some of you know me. Some of you have seen me fight and some of you are my friends. Have your vote. But know this: if you come to remove me, come in force, because if you try to separate me from him, I will kill every single one of you. My hand won't shake. My aim won't falter. My face will be the last thing you‟ll see before you die.”
I jammed the knife into the table and walked out.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“The rabbis paled. I’d managed to terrify holy men. Maybe I could beat up a nun for an encore.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“Would you like to borrow a pair of my panties to wave around at the next Council meeting to get the point across?”
His eyes flashed. “Got any to spare?”
I could’ve picked somebody rational. But no, I had to fall in love with this arrogant idiot. Come to the Keep with me, be my princess. Mourn me when your crazy dad kills me. Yeah, right.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“No more tubs for me." I jumped off the bed and pulled on a pair of Pack sweats. "They make me lose all sense."
Curran sprawled on the bed with a big self-satisfied smile. "Want to know a secret?"
"Sure."
"It's not the bathtub, baby."
Well, aren't we smug. I picked up the corner of the lowest mattress and made a show of looking under it.
"What are you looking for?"
"A pea Your Majesty."
"What?"
"You heard me."
I jumped back as he lunged and his fingers missed me by an inch.
"Getting slow in your old age."
"I thought you liked it slow."
A flashback to last night mugged me and my mind executed a full stop.
He laughed. "Ran out of snappy comebacks?"
"Hush. I'm trying to think of one.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“I picked up the phone and dialed Andrea's extension.
“Yes?”
“He glued the chair to my ass.”
Silence.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“It seems that the young woman made some indelicate suggestion of a threesome...When I got there, Miss Nash was standing by the hot tub in a small bikini, pointing the business end of a SIG-Sauer P-226 at her fella and concerned members of the hotel staff, while dunking the scantily clad female's head under the water and asking, "Who's diving for clams now, bitch?”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“When I'm with him, I can feel myself getting better. It's like he's picking up broken pieces of me and putting me back together, and I don't even know he's doing it. We never talk about it. We don't go to therapy. He just loves me and that's enough.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“Was his body made out of orange rocks and did he at any point yell 'It's clobbering time'?"
"I find your attempt at levity inappropriate."
"Consider me properly chastised.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“I'll call you," he repeated.
"If you call me, I won't pick up the phone."
"You will wait by the phone for my call, and when it rings, you will pick it up and you will speak to me in a civil manner. If you don't know how, ask someone.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“I'm welding the bimbo room shut.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“I've read your summary."
"And?"
"It's not incompetent."
Be still, my heart, so I don't faint from such faint phrase. "Did you expect it to be written in crayon?”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“The mage pulled my knife out of his side and looked at it. “Nice knife.” The voice was deep but female.
I threw my second knife. The blade bit into the mage’s chest. Shit. Missed the neck. “Here, have another one.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“Everybody has something, that one thing they must do to feel happy. I think this is yours, and I want you to be happy. You don’t have to do it, but it’s here if you choose to come back to it.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“I'm counting to ten in my head."
"Is it helping?"
"No."
"It doesn't help me with you either. I used to life weights to alleviate frustration, but someone blowtorched my weight bench. How did you do it, by the way?"
"I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“Because he has the best equipment in the City and he knows how to use it!”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Magic Bleeds
“She died chasing greatness and never saw it each time it was in her hand, so she kept seeking it elsewhere, but never understood the work required to get it or to keep it.”
― Abraham Verghese, quote from Cutting for Stone
“A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.
There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine - a Speaker for the Dead - has told me of two other Rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.
The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. 'Is there any man here,' he says to them, 'who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?'
They murmur and say, 'We all know the desire, but Rabbi none of us has acted on it.'
The Rabbi says, 'Then kneel down and give thanks that God has made you strong.' He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, 'Tell the Lord Magistrate who saved his mistress, then he'll know I am his loyal servant.'
So the woman lives because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.
Another Rabbi. Another city. He goes to her and stops the mob as in the other story and says, 'Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.'
The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. ‘Someday,’ they think, ‘I may be like this woman. And I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her as I wish to be treated.’
As they opened their hands and let their stones fall to the ground, the Rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head and throws it straight down with all his might it crushes her skull and dashes her brain among the cobblestones. ‘Nor am I without sins,’ he says to the people, ‘but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead – and our city with it.’
So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.
The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis and when they veer too far they die. Only one Rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.
So of course, we killed him.
-San Angelo
Letters to an Incipient Heretic”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Speaker for the Dead
“He was softly breathing his life away, the dark blood flowing down his skin of snow and his eyes growing heavy and dim. She kissed him, but Adonis knew not that she kissed him as he died.”
― Edith Hamilton, quote from Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
“Don't do that," he says. "Don't ask me questions you already know the answers to. Twice I've laid myself bare to you and all it's gotten me was a bullet wound and a broken heart. Don't torture me," he says, meeting my eyes again.
"It's a cruel thing to do, even to someone like me.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Ignite Me
“i think of all the thousands of billions of steps and missteps and chances and coincidences that have brought me here. Brought you here, and it feels like the biggest miracle in the world.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Before I Fall
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