“You cannot harden your heart to the future just because of your past. You cannot use cruelty against yourself to justify cruelty to others.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“I’m going to follow her, of course,” Magiano says. “As the night sky turns. When she appears on the other side of the world, I will be there, and when she returns here, so will I.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“After a lifetime of darkness, I want to leave something behind that is made of light.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“None of us are saints. We can all do better.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“You are so full of light,” I say after a moment. “You align with joy, and I with fear and fury. If you could see into my thoughts, you would surely turn away. So why would you stay with me, even if return to Kenettra and resume our lives?”
“You paint me as a saint,” he murmurs. “But I aligned with greed solely to prevent that.”
Even now, he can make my lips twitch with a smile. “I’m serious, Magiano.”
“As am I. None of us are saints. I have seen your darkness, yes, and know your struggle. I won’t deny it.” He touches my chin with one hand. At this gesture, the whispers seem to settle, pushed away where I can’t hear them. “But you are also passionate and ambitious and loyal. You are a thousand things, mi Adelinetta, not just one. Do not reduce yourself to that.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“You are a light,” she replies gently. “And when you shine, you shine bright.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“To those who, in spite of everything, still choose goodness”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“I saw her, once.
“She passed through our village, through fields littered with dead soldiers after her forces overwhelmed the nation of Dumor. Her other Elites followed and then rows of white-robed Inquisitors, wielding the white-and-silver banners of the White Wolf. Where they went, the sky dimmed and the ground cracked—the clouds gathered behind the army as if a creature alive, black and churning in fury. As if the goddess of Death herself had come.
“She paused to look down at one of our dying soldiers. He trembled on the ground, but his eyes stayed on her. He spat something at her. She only stared back at him. I don’t know what he saw in her expression, but his muscles tightened, his legs pushing against the dirt as he tried in vain to get away from her. Then the man started to scream. It is a sound I shall never forget as long as I live. She nodded to her Rainmaker, and he descended from his horse to plunge a sword through the dying soldier. Her face did not change at all. She simply rode on.
“I never saw her again. But even now, as an old man, I remember her as clearly as if she were standing before me. She was ice personified. There was once a time when darkness shrouded the world, and the darkness had a queen.”
—A witness’s account of Queen Adelina’s siege on the nation of Dumor
The Village of Pon-de-Terre
28 Marzien, 1402”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“Everyone knows that to openly show any disrespect for Magiano means instant death at my hands.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“She walks to the boy, tilts her head up at him, and smiles. He bends down to kiss her. Then he helps her onto the horse, and she rides away with him to a faraway place, until they can no longer be seen.
These are only rumors, of course, and make little more than a story to tell around the fire. But it is told. And thus they live on.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“Someday, when I am nothing but dust and wind, what tale will they tell about me?”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“We were never meant to exist, Adelina," he says. "And we will never exist again. But we cannot take the entire world with us." He meets my gaze. "No matter how it has wronged us.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“We are doomed to be forever young.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“Every bone in my body yearns to keep this boy safe, always.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“There was once a time when darkness shrouded the world, and the darkness had a queen.” —”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“The first time Raffaele ever saw Adelina, it was a stormy-wracked night that changed her life and, indeed, the world. He recalls looking down from the window in his Dalia lodging to see a girl with silver-bright hair, conjuring an illusion of darkness such that he had never seen. He remembers the day she first came to his chambers in Estenzia, when Enzo was still alive and she was still innocent, and the way she looked up at him with her uncertain, damaged gaze. He remembers her test, and what he said to Enzo that night. How long ago that had been. How he had judged her wrongly.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“The day will come when we strike you down,” she’s saying. “Mark my words. We will haunt your nightmares.”
I clench my fists and fling an illusion of pain across her body. “I am the nightmare.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“If I’ve learned anything from my past and my present, it’s the power of fear. You can give your subjects all the generosity in the world, and still they will demand more. But those who are afraid don’t fight back. I know this well enough.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“The fire in you burns as fiercely as it did when I first met you.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“Do you know what I miss the most? That night.”
My heart skips a beat, aching in sudden sadness. “And what about the girl you once sat beside, on that night? Do you miss her too?”
“She is still here,” he answers. “That is why I stay.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“I will wake a hundred times, lost in the madness of this nightmare, until the sunlight streaming through my windows finally burns the scene away. Even then, hours later, I cannot be sure I am not still in my dream.
I am afraid that, one night, I will never wake. I will be doomed to rush to that door over and over again, running from a nightmare in which I am always, forever, lost.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“You think me cruel.”
“No.” Magiano hesitates for a long moment. “Maybe a little.”
“I’m not branding them because I am cruel,” I say calmly. “I’m doing it as a reminder of what they’ve done to us. To the marked. You’re so quick to forget.”
“I never forget,” Magiano replies. This time, there is a slight sharpness to his tone. His hand hovers near his side, where his childhood wound continues to plague him. “But branding the unmarked with your crest will not make them any more loyal to you.”
“It makes them fear me.”
“Fear works best with some love,” Magiano says. “Show them that you can be terrifying, yet generous.” The gold bands in his braids clink. “Let the people love you a little, mi Adelinetta.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“I laugh at him, and behind us, several Inquisitors stir in surprise at the sound. Only Magiano can coax joy out of me so easily.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“Trusting me is a dangerous game, mi Adelinetta.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“If you are very quiet and do not look away, you may see the brightest star in the constellation glow steadily brighter. It brightens until it overwhelms every other star in the sky, brightens until it seems to touch the ground, and then the glow is gone, and in its place is a girl.
Her hair and lashes are painted a shifting silver, and a scar crosses one side of her face. She is dressed in Sealand silk and a necklace of sapphire . Some say that, once upon a time, she had a prince, a father, a society of friends. Others say that she was once a wicked queen ,a worker of illusions, a girl who brought darkness across the lands. Stilll others say that she once had a sister, and that she loved her dearly. Perhaps all of these are true.
She walks to the boy, tilts her head up at him, and smiles. He bends down to kiss her. Then he helps her onto the horse, and she rides away with him to a faraway place, until they can no longer be seen.
These are only rumour,of course, and make little more than a story to tell round a fire. But it is told. And thus they live on.
-"The Midnight Star", a foltale”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“As you can see, I keep my word,” I call to the rest of the crowd. “Do not take advantage of my generosity, and I will not take advantage of your weakness.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“What if you are wrong? What if the gods sent you, and indeed the rest of us, not because we were never meant to be, but because we were always meant to be?”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“Like fear and fury. It is energy from another realm, threads from beneath the surface, an immortal place never meant to be disturbed. Raffaele trembles.
Something is poisoning the world.”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
“I never saw her again. But even now, as an old man, I remember her as clearly as if she were standing before me. She was ice personified. There was once a time when darkness shrouded the world, and the darkness had a queen.”
—A witness’s account of Queen Adelina’s siege on the nation of Dumor
The Village of Pon-de-Terre
28 Marzien, 1402”
― Marie Lu, quote from The Midnight Star
Marie Lu
Born place: in Wuxi, China
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“Ele tinha o desespero, não a coragem, para ser ele mesmo. Uma vez que você tem isso, você não pode dar errado, porque você não pode cometer nenhum erro quando as pessoas o amam por você ser você mesmo. Mas, para Kurt, não importava que as outras pessoas o amassem; ele simplesmente não se amava o bastante.”
― Charles R. Cross, quote from Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
“Ah, Robert?”
“Shhhh, not while I’m praying,” he said, momentarily losing his place before he started again, “thank you for letting us survive that trip from hell. Thank you for ignoring my prayers for a quick death when I didn’t think that I’d be able to survive another day of starvation,” he said, making her roll her eyes in annoyance.
“You were given three full meals a day just like everyone else,” she pointed out, not bothering to mention the fact that, on most days, he’d received second helpings. She sat down on a bench near their luggage, wondering just how much longer he was going to keep this up.
“I’m sorry for all the cursing that my wife forced me to do while I was on that boat,” he continued, ignoring her even as he amused her. “As you know, she’s been such a bad influence on me. Thank you for pulling me from near death and somehow giving me the strength to survive.”
“Near death?” she asked, frowning. “When were you near death?”
“When was I near death?” he asked in stunned disbelief as he opened his eyes so that he could glare at her.
“How could you forget all those times that I could barely move? When I struggled to find the will to live so that I wouldn’t leave you a young widow? Did my struggle for survival mean nothing to you?” he demanded in outrage, terrifying the people that were forced to walk past him to get to the docks and making her wrack her brain as she struggled to figure out what he was talking about.
“Do you mean those few times when you had a touch of seasickness?” she asked, unable to think of anything else that he could be talking about since he’d been the picture of health during the majority of the trip.
“A touch?” he repeated in disbelief. “I nearly died!”
― R.L. Mathewson, quote from Truce
“With his marine clocks, John Harrison tested the waters of space-time. He succeeded, against all odds, in using the fourth—temporal—dimension to link points on the three-dimensional globe. He wrested the world’s whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.”
― Dava Sobel, quote from Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
“Trueborn children are made in a marriage bed and blessed by the Father and the Mother, but bastards are born of lust and weakness.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
“He reflected on his hitherto reflection that soldiers and sailors were, upon the whole, quite different creatures. ‘And perhaps they are, too: yet perhaps drink, in very large quantities, may make the difference less evident.”
― Patrick O'Brian, quote from Blue at the Mizzen
Between the Lines
Her Mad Hatter
Benito Cereno
History and Utopia
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