“The night breathed through the apartment like a dark animal. The ticking of a clock. The groan of a floorboard as he slipped out of his room. All was drowned by its silence. But Jacob loved the night. He felt it on his skin like a promise. Like a cloak woven from freedom and danger.”
“He longed for the deep as she longed for the night sky and for white lilies floating on water -- although she still tried to convince herself that love alone could feed her soul.”
“Since when does the butterfly ask about the caterpillar?”
“How loud a heart could beat. Until it took your breath away.”
“The Fairy's dress rustled as she turned. Human women dressed like flowers, layers of petals around a mortal, rotting core.”
“The tent in which she first met him had smelled of blood, of the death she did not understand, and still she had thought of it all as a game. She had promised him the world. His flesh in the flesh of his enemies. And much too late had she realized what he had sown in her. Love. Worst of all poisons.”
“A mirror hung between the shelves.
Clara stepped in front of it and let her fingers run over the silver roses that covered the frame. She had never seen anything so beautiful. The glass they surrounded was dark, as if the night had spilled onto it. It was misted up, and right where she saw the reflection of her face was the imprint of a hand.”
“She shed no tears. She just sat there, as if someone had cut out her heart.”
“What was this yearning, tearing at her insides like hunger and thirst? It couldn't be love. Love was warm and soft, like a bed of leaves. But this was dark, like the shade under a poisonous shrub, and it was hungry. So hungry. It must have some other name, just as there couldn't be the same word for life and death, or for moon and sun”
“Girl. Woman. So much more vulnerable. Strong and yet weak. A heart that knew no armor.”
“Her skin smelled of autumn and the wind.
Don't Jacob...
But it was too late. Clara didn't flinch as he pulled her close. He grabbed her hair, kissed her mouth, and he felt her heart beating as fast as his own.
...Let her go, Jacob. But he kissed her again, and it was his name she whispered, not Will's.”
“Power. Like wine when you have it. Like poison when you lose it.”
“Power. Intoxicating. Like a fine wine.”
“När det gällde traditioner kunde man inte argumentera med dvärgar, lika lite som med präster om religion.”
“Det var kejsarinnans far som hade stiftat en lag, att föremål, djur och människor med magiska egenskaper var skyldiga att rapporteras. För det var ju inte lätt att regera i en värld där ett guldträd kunde göra en tiggare till kung och talande djur viskade rebelliska visdomsord till skogsarbetarna.”
“I know why you're here ... This world doesn't frighten you half as much as the other one. You have nothing and nobody to lose here. Except Fox, and she clearly worries more about you than you do about her. You've left all that could frighten you in the other world. But then Will came here and brought it all with him.”
“Guilt is a strong motivator, sometimes even stronger than love.”
“Therese of Austry would have made a great treasure hunter if she hadn’t been born the daughter of an Emperor.”
“You make peace with one sister only to declare war on the other. It’s always like that with peace, isn’t it? Always to someone’s detriment, already sowing the seed for the next war.”
“The best lies stay close to the truth.”
“In fairy tales, the heroes are punished when they run away from a task. The heroes, not their younger brothers...”
“Even the Doughskins had to admit it: in this world, only stone could claim to last.”
“Truth or lie... he had always chosen the lie, to spare his little brother any unpleasant truth.”
“Hentzau saw the Jade Goyl just as clearly as the Fairy had in her dreams. The pale green stone ran through his human skin like a promise.”
“Which skin shall I give you, Clara Ferber? Do you want fur? Do you want stone?”
“The Dark Fairy touched her chest. No heart, like her sisters. So where did the love come from?”
“Used as he was to general approbation of his person, he was amused to discover that his vanity was mildly affronted at her plain astonishment that such an insignificant sort as himself should be brother to the darkly dramatic Edgar DeVane.
(Haunted Soldier)”
“I thought of how much they all wanted to be free; how they went mad wanting their freedom; I began to wonder whether it was I that was mad because I was happy to be bound; whether I was alone in knowing that I could not live without the clamour of the voices within me.”
“The dreamers, those who misread the actual state of affairs and act upon their emotions, are often the source of the greatest mistakes in history—the wars that are not thought out, the disasters that are not foreseen”
“Henry went down on one knee. 'Like King Arthur's knights,' Mr. Fogarty had told him, but he didn't feel much like a knight. In fact he felt like a twit.”
“The sign of its passing was written there upon the sky as if a giant hand had drawn a piece of chalk across the blue dome of heaven. Even as they watched, the gleaming vapor trail began to fray at the edges, breaking up into wisps of cloud, until it seemed that a bridge of snow had been thrown from horizon to horizon.”
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