“But then, liars do make the best magicians, and he happened to be exceptional.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“The only rule that counted was to not get caught.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“But then, people usually do miss what's right in front of them.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“She didn't have time to swoon over some boy, no matter how pretty he was.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“She kept him on his toes every time they met, so it was only fair he got to do the same. Never mind how much he was growing to like their games.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“Are you trying to blackmail me?” she asked.
“Not trying, no. Not yet, at least.” He smiled pleasantly, because he had the sense it would irritate her even more. “But give me time, and I might find something I want from you.”
She let out a derisive laugh. “In your dreams.”
He winked. “Every night, sweetheart.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“Don’t start telling yourself stories about me, Esta. I’m not some knight in shining armor. I don’t have some hidden heart of gold. I’m a bastard, in every sense of the word.”
“Who said I want you to be anything but what you are? I like your angles and your edges,” she told him, hoping he could hear the truth in her words. “I have plenty of my own, you know.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“Liars Make the best Magicians, and he happened to be exceptional!" taken from The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“Esta rolled down the window, letting the hot breath of summer rustle across her face. With it came the familiar smells of the city, stale and heavy with the metallic choke of exhaust and the ripeness of too many people sharing one tiny piece of land. But it was also enticing—the scent of danger and possibility that lived and breathed in the crowded streets. Dirty and frantic though it was, the city—this city—was home. She’d never wanted to be anywhere else.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“Standing to leave, he looked at her one last time, hating her and loving her just the same. She was yet another thing tying him to the city, his duty to her like a straitjacket holding him against his will. A locked box he couldn’t find a way out of.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“Order, the Bowery, the city itself. It was all the same to Harte. Each one was holding him down, holding him back. He’d throw them off one by one, until he was free, or he’d die trying.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“They were sitting on opposite sides of the board, playing each other in hopes of gaining the same prize.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“They weren’t so different, the two of them. They’d both been abandoned by their parents, but at least she’d had the Professor. He’d seen something in her worth saving, but Harte never had that. She still might not trust him, but she understood him. The drive that made him who he was, the determination to prove himself—the bone-deep need to belong somewhere—those were all things she knew very well. She understood the hurt, too. The fear that there was something intrinsically wrong with you to make the people who were supposed to love you leave. The way that fear either hardened you or destroyed you. It had turned into a sort of armor for her, another weapon in her arsenal, and she suspected the same was true of Harte.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“He wished . . . He didn’t know what he wished. That he hadn’t seen the intentions behind those honey-colored eyes of hers? That he hadn’t predicted her duplicity so easily? Or maybe, stupid as he was, he wished that he could stop himself from the inevitability of hurting her? But wishes were for children, and he’d grown up a long time ago. Only one of them could win this game, and it had to be him.”
― Lisa Maxwell, quote from The Last Magician
“Searching too hard for God can get in the way of finding Him. Sometimes you just have to stop looking and let yourself be taken by surprise.”
― Diane Schoemperlen, quote from Our Lady of the Lost and Found: A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship
“He thought of himself and Chrisfield picking up cigarette butts and the tramp, tramp, tramp of feet on the drill field. Where was the connection? Was this all futile madness? They’d come from such various worlds, all these men sleeping about him, to be united in this. And what did they think of it, all these sleepers? Had they too not had dreams when they were boys? Or had the generations prepared them only for this? He”
― John Dos Passos, quote from Three Soldiers
“Cassidy's heart tried to leap out through his taught skin and hop into his wet hands. But outwardly it was all very calm, very serene, just as always, and it seemed to last a tiny forever, just like that, a snapshot of them all on the curved parabola of a starting line, eight giant hearts attached to eight pairs of bellows-like lungs mounted on eight pairs of supercharged stilts. They were poised on the edge of some howling vortex they had run 10,000 miles to get to. Now they had to run one more”
― quote from Once a Runner
“Went home briefly to get my halter dress for Hero's party, and Mom was waiting for me at the kitchen table. Either she's psychic, or she totally reads my journal, because I haven't said a word about Ben, but somehow she knows something is up.
She was siting with a tray of peanut butter crackers, milk, and about twenty pamphlets on STDs she got from her friend Connie, a nurse at Kaiser. When she started showing me pictures of genital warts, I put my cracker down and said, 'Mom, is this really necessary?' She said, 'Honey, I just want you to understand the risks.'
'Yeah, thanks. Now I'm so traumatized I won't have sex until I'm a senior citizen.'
She smiled. 'Great. I guess I've done my job then. Do you want a sandwich.”
― Jody Gehrman, quote from Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty
“Genius guarantees the faculties of the heart. Man is no less immortal than the soul. Great thoughts spring from reason! Fraternity is not a myth. Newborn children know nothing of life, not even greatness. In misfortune, friends increase.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, quote from Maldoror and the Complete Works
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