“Her eyes were closed to the sunlight flickering past the window, her ears plugged with tiny white buds, slender fingers tapping a steady moderato beat at odds with the easy sway in her shoulders. I couldn't hear the music, but as I watched, her body coiled around a deep breath, and the rhythm accelerated through the flat of her hand, and then her hips rocked to four powerful chords, and her head dropped loose on her shoulders, and she squeezed her knees together and drew in her feet, her calf muscles tautening and her ankle bones turning and then tendons in the back of her hand thumping time and the cords of her neck pulling the skin tight over her collarbones as her body snaked through what I heard in my head as Hugh Burns's guitar solo in "Baker Street" clear as day. And though confined to her seat, she danced unselfconsciously and without restraint, and every small movement in every small part of her—the life in her—was the most beautiful thing I thought I'd ever seen. I wanted to cup her gently in my hands and carry her home and keep her forever but, mindful of the probability that she might have other ideas, instead I closed my eyes and turned up the music in my head and, in spirit if not quite in body, danced with her instead.”
“Did I really feel so powerless in my own life that I had to take this poor, vulnerable creature's to compensate”
“For eighty-eight years, the world revolved around Ivy. That which she could see and touch was real to her, everything else a mere figment. Departing visitors, setting off back for their own lives, were swiftly dispatched from her conscious thoughts, taking with them all tangible evidence of their existence. She would lock her doors to the outside world and settle down with a cup of tea, but for Foggy entirely alone in her world. And yet conversely, whilst the conversation in that departing car might revolve around Ivy for a handful of miles, the reality of her existence would soon be forgotten in favor of the more immediate stresses and strains pervading the lives of Peter and Janet. Out of sight, out of mind.
Every human being occupies a space at the dead center of his or her own universe.”
“Right now universes are being created thrown together and destroyed the world over. Seven billion souls, each preoccupied with their own unique reality, each with a head full of memories, plans, learned knowledge and accumulated trivia; birthdays, telephone numbers, bus routes, passwords. Each one with somewhere to go, something they need to get done. They all have birth certificates and shoe sizes. Every single one has a story.”
“Every human being occupies a space at the dead center of his or her own universe.”
“Right now universes are being created, thrown together and destroyed the world over. Seven billion souls, each preoccupied with their own unique reality, each with a head full of memories, plans, learned knowledge and accumulated trivia; birthdays, telephone numbers, bus routes, passwords. Each one with somewhere to go, something they need to get done. They all have birth certificates and shoe sizes. Every single one has a story.”
“They said the world was divided into those folks who ran away from danger, and those who ran toward it.”
“What we humans think we know is nothing compared to what we need to believe to numb the fear and pain.”
“Countries are forged by war; perhaps girls are, too. New England and I will be reborn together in this war between the witches and the Brothers. Between Maura and me.
I am newly wrought -- a girl of steel and snow and heartrending good-byes.
My magic is renewed by my heartbreak. It spills out my fingertips, swirling around me. The wind picks up, bitter cold now. The rain turns abruptly to snow, haloing the gas streetlamps like iron angels. Enormous snowflakes begin to fall -- fast, faster -- obscuring my sister, hiding her and Brenna and the carriage and the gray stone building that has become my home.
I am all alone in a sea of whirling white.
It feels right that it should be so.”
“The fallen
Leaf flies
Like a
Young Icarus
And
Then
Disintegrates”
“Standing there on his new perch, Sham was overwhelmingly bored of feeling overwhelmed. The more he worked, he realized, the quicker he worked.”
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