The Atlas Six

The problem with knowledge, is its inexhaustible craving. the more of it you have, the less you feel you know

they were binary stars, trapped in each other’s gravitational field and easily diminished without the other’s opposing force

The moral of this story is: Beware the man who faces you unarmed. If in his eyes you are not the target, then you can be sure you are the weapon.

Really, there was nothing more dangerous than a woman who knew her own worth.

A flaw of humanity,” said Parisa, shrugging. “The compulsion to be unique, which is at war with the desire to belong to a single identifiable sameness.

The day you are not a fire,” he said, “is the day the earth will fall still for me.

Knowledge is carnage. You can’t have it without sacrifice.

We are the gods of our own universes, aren't we? Destructive ones.

If not for her, Nico might not have noticed most of the things he did, and probably vice versa. A uniquely upsetting curse, really, how little he knew how to exist when she wasn’t there.

I know exactly what shape she takes up in the universe,' he pleaded in explanation. 'If anyone can recognize her, it's me.

we are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal—that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn

Depending who viewed it, Persephone had either been stolen or she had run from Demeter. Either way, she made herself queen.

We’re all starving, but not everyone is doing it correctly. Some people are taking too much, making themselves sick, and it kills them. The excess is poison; even food is a poison to someone who’s been deprived. Everything has the capacity to turn toxic. It’s easy, so fucking easy to die, so the ones who make themselves something are the same ones who learn to starve correctly.

Funny how that worked; the innocent fragility of being human. There were so many ways to break and so few of them heroic or noble.

You're a fire hazard, Rhodes," he said. "So stop apologizing for the damage and just let the fucker burn.

It was the kind of look that reminded him she’d set him on fire the first time she’d met him without even batting an eye. He’d like her more if she did it more often.

Ambition was such a dirty word, so tainted, but she had it. She was enslaved by it. There was so much ego to the concept of fate, but she needed to cling to it. She needed to believe she was meant for enormity; that the fulfillment of a destiny could make for the privilege of salvation, even if it didn't feel that way right now.

Don’t envy me, Reina,” she advised softly, turning to say it in Reina’s ear. “Fear me.

You know why you don’t understand me?” Parisa answered Reina’s thoughts, stepping closer to lower her voice. “Because you think you’ve figured me out. You think you’ve met me before, other versions of women like me, but you have no idea what I am. You think my looks are what make me? My ambitions? You can’t begin to know the sum of my parts, and you can stare all you like, but you won’t see a damn thing until I show you.

The problem with knowledge, is it's inexhaustible craving. the more of it you have, the less you feel you know

The world was mostly entropy and chaos; magic, then, was order, because it was control.

You don’t have to be sorry for existing, you know,

What are we celebrating?” “Our fragile mortality,” Tristan said. “The inevitability that we will descend into chaos and dust.

I’ve got you, Rhodes. From here on, I swear.

Every single one of us is missing something. We are all too powerful, too extraordinary, and don't you see it's because we're riddled with vacancies? We are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal - that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn.

There is a difference between what we are capable of and how we choose to use it.

Many people incorrectly assume time to be a steady incline, a measured arc of growth and progress, but when history is written by the victors the narrative can often misrepresent that shape.

People who lined up to see the Mona Lisa typically couldn’t name the paintings hanging nearby, and there was nothing wrong with that.

There was nothing more dangerous than a woman who knew her own worth.