“People were messy. They were defined not only by what they'd done, but by what they would have done, under different circumstances, molded as much by their regrets as their actions, choices they stood by and those they wished they could undo. Of course, there was no going back - time only moved forward - but people could change.
For worse.
And for better.
It wasn't easy. The world was complicated. Life was hard. And so often, living hurt.
So make it worth the pain.”
“There were two kinds of monsters, the kind that hunted the streets and the kind that lived in your head. She could fight the first, but the second was more dangerous. It was always, always, always a step ahead.”
“I know it hurts," she said. "So make it worth the pain.”
“Mourning was its own kind of music—the sound of so many hearts, of so many breaths, of so many standing together.”
“I didn't stop fighting," he said, the words so low he worried Kate wouldn't hear them, but she did. "I just got tired of losing. It's easier this way."
"Of course it's easier," said Kate. "that doesn't mean it's right.”
“I know it hurts," she said. "So make it worth the pain."
"How?"
"By not letting go," she said softly. "By holding on, to anger, to hope, or whatever it is that keeps you fighting."
You, he thought.”
“I’m willing to walk in darkness if it keeps humans in the light.”
“I spent a long time playing that game,” she said. “Pretending there were other versions of this world, where other versions of me got to live, and be happy, even if I didn’t, and you know what? It’s lonely as hell. Maybe there are other versions, other lives, but this one’s ours. It’s all we’ve got.”
“August stared at her, aghast. "Did I know that kissing you would bring your soul to surface? That - THAT - would have the same effect as pain or music? No, I must have missed that lesson."
She stared at him, agape. "August, was that sarcasm?”
“Do you ever wonder why music brings a soul to surface? What makes beauty work as well as pain?”
“I am a man, not a movement,” he said. “But if a movement is what it takes to end this war, then I will play my part.”
“We do it, Jackson, because compassion must be louder than pride.”
“Every weakness is a place to slide a knife.”
“Are you afraid of your own shadow?”
“There was a strange place, between knowing and not knowing. A place where things could live in the back of your head without weighing down your heart.”
“Monsters,” he said slowly, “all want the same thing: to feed. They are united by that common goal, while you are all divided by your morals and your pride. What do I think? I think that if you cannot come together, you cannot win.”
“I don’t know who I am, and who I’m not, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be, and I miss who I was; I miss it every day, Kate, but there’s no place for that August anymore. No place for the version of me who wanted to go to school, and have a life, and feel human, because this world doesn’t need that August. It needs someone else.”
“A Corsai, a Malchai, and a Sunai walk into a bar—
Everyone groaned, including August.”
“Kate wondered who was more addicted to their high, serial killers or coffee addicts.”
“Sight is an important thing, August. Without it, our minds invent, and the things they invent are almost always worse than the truth. It’s important that they see us. See you. It’s important that they know you’re on their side.”
“If Verity's sins were knives, quick and vicious, then Prosperity's were poison. Slow, insidious, but just as deadly.”
“Oh, the perks of being perpetually underestimated.”
“She looked almost bored, but he knew it was an act, because everything about Kate had always been an act— the bravado, the cold air, all the aspects of her father arranged into a shield, a mask.”
“...something more than the sum of its parts-”
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she whispered. “Nice juicy human heart.”
“As she taped up her latest cuts, she wondered if, somewhere, there was a version of herself having fun. Feet up on the back of a theater seat while movie monsters slunk out of the shadows, and people in the audience screamed because it was fun to be afraid when you knew you were safe.”
“Come out, little Katherine, he’d say. Let’s play a game.”
“Everyone was made of sounds, and August had learned hers the first day they met.”
“Funny, how simple things became when you didn’t have a choice.”
“And Alice drove her hand into Kate’s chest.”
“Can either one of you actually fly?"
"Ummm...define fly."
I heard cursing over the radios.”
“He was so lonely that he laughed at himself.”
“No man can see himself unless he borrows the eyes of a friend”
“And all those boys of Europe born in those times, and thereabouts those times, Russian, French, Belgian, Serbian, Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, Italian, Prussian, German, Austrian, Turkish – and Canadian, Australian, American, Zulu, Gurkha, Cossack, and all the rest – their fate was written in a ferocious chapter in the book of life, certainly. Those millions of mothers and their million gallons of mother’s milk, millions of instances of small talk and baby talk, beatings and kisses, ganseys and shoes, piled up in history in great ruined heaps, with a loud and broken music, human stories told for nothing, for ashes, for death’s amusement, flung on the mighty scrapheap of souls, all those million boys in all their humours to be milled by the millstones of a coming war.”
“The couch is shorter than I thought. But I’m getting used to it.”
“There’s room in the bed.”
She forced herself to keep shoveling stone into the wheelbarrow. If she didn’t look at him, she didn’t have to see on his face whether or not he was serious. If he wasn’t, she might whack him with the shovel, after all. If he was…
“That’s a bad idea.”
He laughed. “So is filling your wheelbarrow so full you can’t move it, but you did it, anyway.”
“Crap.” She’d mounded the stone so high she’d have to dump half of it out to budge the damn thing.
“I’ll wheel it down for you.” He winked at her. “This time.”
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