“But she underestimated me. I played my cards, I laid in wait, I let myself be beaten and manipulated. If she keeps that promise she made to me, I’ll show her the truth I’ve learned on her boat. I don’t just raise monsters. I am one.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“And it sucks, because I want to kiss her. It's infuriating how perfect it would be to kiss her right now, perched on a cannon on a pirate ship under the stars. That sounds like something off the pages of an adventure novel. But my life isn't one of those stories. My story is a hurricane, and here with Swift is just the eye.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“It's one of the greatest gifts you can give someone, knowing their stories.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“They can try to kill me all they want, but I'm the girl who stands on tha backs of the beasts of the NeoPacific. The Minnow blazes from within, promising life and warmth and vilainy, but out here I'm mighty.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“You don't touch her controls. You never touch my ship like that again. Next time it happens, I cut a finger off. Each time you go against me, you lose another finger. When you're out of fingers, you're out of luck. Am I clear?"
... "Perfectly," I choke. "Ten chances it is.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“Am I 'just one of them'?" Swift asks, miffed.
"No, you're so much more."
...
Home is what you kill for.
And I killed for Swift”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“Don't get too chummy with me, Cas. I'll eat you alive." - Swift
... "Was that a threat? God, you're the least intimidating pirate I've ever had the misfortune to meet." - Cas”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“You're at the top of the world - you're the most powerful thing on the sea when you're serving under her - but there's a cost. There's always a cost.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“Did it ever occur to you that your neck might matter to me at least as much as mine? Actually, probably more than mine? - Swift, to Cas”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“What do you mean, what's the deal with my hair?" - Swift
...
"Did you get bored one day and hack half of it off? You look like you've had a close call with a weed whacker." - Cas”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“Home is what you kill for. And I killed for Swift.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“But when you suffer with someone, you learn them. And it’s hard to kill a person you’ve learned.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“I don’t just raise monsters. I am one.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give someone, knowing their stories.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“But before that day it felt like at least I had an ally on this boat. Now I have nothing. Well, I have a fat baby sea monster. But Bao doesn't tell jokes, and somehow I need that.
I hate how I need that.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“Dad takes a step back, one hand still on my shoulder, and reaches into his pocket. He draws out a little blue capsule, and I feel every molecule in my body screaming to run. Dad must catch the panic in my eyes - he squeezes my shoulder and holds out the capsule. "Cas, it's fine. It's going to be fine. This is just in case."
Just in case. Just in case the worst happens. The ship falls. Durga fails, I fail, and the knowledge I carry as a Reckoner trainer must be disposed of. That information can't fall into the wrong hands, into the hands of people who will do anything to take down our beasts.
So this little capsule holds the pill that will kill me if it comes to that.
"It's waterproof," Dad continues, pressing it into my hand. "The pocket on the collar of your wetsuit, keep it there. It has to stay with you at all times."
It won't happen on this voyage. It's such a basic mission, gift-wrapped to be easy enough for me to handle on my own. But even holding the pill fills me with revulsion. On all my training voyages, I've never had to carry one of these capsules. That burden only goes to full-time trainers.
"Cas." Dad tilts my chin up, ripping my gaze from the pull. "You were born to do this. I promise you, you'll forget you even have it." I suppose he ought to know - he's been carrying one for two decades.
It's just a right of passage, I tell myself, and throw my arms around his neck once more.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
“She probably just wants to see me get eaten.”
― Emily Skrutskie, quote from The Abyss Surrounds Us
Emily Skrutskie
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“So now, I look at these stories, and almost like a photograph snapped at a party, I find all manner of signs and indications of who I was. Was? Yes, was. I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore. Writing an introduction to the tenth anniversary edition of Weaveworld last year I remarked on much of the same thing: the man who'd written that book was no longer around. He'd died in me, was buried in me. We are our own graveyards; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived, and if we're neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present.”
― Clive Barker, quote from Books of Blood: Volumes One to Three
“If Nicholas Benedict truly had been able to see the future, his own would have startled him to sleep at once, for he would have seen that he was destined to do things far greater than he ever could have imagined – that wonderful and amazing people would one day be drawn to him like metal to a magnet; that together with Nicholas they would form a most unusual kind of family; and that together, during one of the world’s darkest, most dangerous hours, they would change the course of history… For now he was simply a little boy on a cot, trying to fight off sleep as he had done countless times before…”
― Trenton Lee Stewart, quote from The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict
“TEN [exploding]. Bright! He's a common ignorant slob. He don't even speak good English!
ELEVEN [slowly]. He doesn't even speak good English.”
― Reginald Rose, quote from Twelve Angry Men
“If I've learned one lesson from all that's happened to me, it's that there is no such thing as the biggest mistake of your existence. There's no such thing as ruining your life. Life's a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.”
― Sophie Kinsella, quote from The Undomestic Goddess
“If a man has been your teacher for a day, you should treat him as your father for the rest of his life.”
― Wu Cheng'en, quote from Monkey: The Journey to the West
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