Muse of Nightmares

Once upon a time there was a silence that dreamed of becoming a song, and then I found you, and now everything is music.

Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bull’s-eye yourself.

There comes a certain point with a hope or a dream, when you either give it up or give up everything else. And if you choose the dream, if you keep on going, then you can never quit, because it's all you are.

It’s the mind. It’s the most complex and astonishing thing there is, that there’s a world inside each of us that no one else can ever know or see or visit.

I would have chosen you, if they had let me choose.

Once upon a time, a sister made a vow she didn't know how to break, and it broke her instead. Once upon a time, a girl did the impossible, but she did it just a little too late.

People are our safe places. I have one: a person who’s a home and a world to me.

Can we leave the past behind us?" Could they? The question was everything. "That's an excellent place for the past," said Suheyla. "If you don't leave it there, it clutters everything up and you just keep tripping over it.

We're all on the same side. Even her. You can be on the same side and have different ideas.

The ones who know can't tell us, and the ones who tell us don't know.

For an instant, at least, they seemed one and the same, as though all anguish exists in the same deep well, no matter what loss or misfortune leads us to it. We might be at odds, hate each other, and desired each others destruction, but in our despair, we are lost in the same darkness, breathing the same air as we choke on our grief.

Many a choice is made this way: By pretending it makes itself.

It turned out that sometimes it's enough to start doing things differently now.

He had, in his hearts, declared war on the dark child, but Lazlo was no warrior, and his hearts had no talent for hate.

Good little girls don't stab their nurses and drag toddlers over their corpses in order to save their lives. Good little girls don't kill. They die. And Minya was not a good little girl.

There was a word from a myth: sathaz . It was the desire to possess that which can never be yours. It meant senseless, hopeless yearning, the way a gutter child might dream of being king, and it came from the tale of the man who loved the moon.

She gave the words back to him, murmuring, and kept them, too. You could do that: Give them back and keep them. "I love you" is generous that way.

The way he looked at her, she felt like some kind of miracle, as though his dreamer’s eyes cast her in their glow of wonder.

You should have seen them, Thyon said. "It was surreal." As an afterthought, he added, "Though I can't believe none of them rode the dragon." "I know!" said Ruza. "What was Azareen's thinking, choosing a winged horse when she could have a dragon?" "I don't think she was really focused on which creature was best," said Tzara. "You shouldn't have to focus on it," said Ruza. "It's instinctive. Dragons are always best.

This is Weep. You can’t expect things to make sense here.” Thyon didn’t agree. “I expect they make perfect sense,” he said. “Just under a different set of rules.” It was a matter of learning the rules, like learning a new language.

The mind is good at hiding things, but there's something it cannot do: It can't erase. It can only conceal, and concealed things are not gone. They rot. They fester, they leak poisons. They ache and stink. They hiss like serpents in tall grass.

All empires fail. They overreach, spread too thin, collect one enemy too many. They’re gnawed at from within by corruption, greed, betrayal.

There is unique pleasure in introducing the bizarre and inconceivable to others.

You don’t know yet what you’re capable of, but I’m willing to bet it’s extraordinary.

We might be at odds, hate each other, and desire each other’s destruction, but in our despair, we are lost in the same darkness, breathing the same air as we choke on our grief.

Her voice would die before she ran out of rage. She could scream a hole in her throat and come unraveled, fall to pieces like moth-chewed silk, and still, from the leftover shreds of her, the little pile of tatters, would pour forth this unending scream.

It wasn’t even an alternate version of his life. He hadn’t gone back in time and done everything differently to get to this place. It turned out that sometimes it’s enough to start doing things differently now.

You’re the good kind of faranji, I suppose.” “Oh yes,” she said. “Very good. I even taste good, or so I’m told.” He was focused on not falling to his death, and so he missed the mischief in her voice. “Taste,” he scoffed. “I suppose they’re cannibals. Who’s calling them barbarians now?” Calixte laughed with delighted disbelief, and it was only then, too late, that Thyon took her meaning. Oh gods. Taste. He flung back his head to look up at her, nearly losing his balance in the process. She laughed harder at the shock on his face. “Cannibals!” she repeated. “That’s good. I’m going to start calling Tzara that. My sweet cannibal. Can I tell you a secret?” She whispered the rest, wide-eyed and zestful: “I’m a cannibal, too.

Skathis might have been an artist, but he'd been a vile one. Strange the dreamer was an artist, too, and he was the antidote to vile.