“Yeah, it never fails to amaze me how a single lie can undo an entire lifetime of good. (Aiden)”
“How did you learn to stop crying? (Leta)
I nailed my heart shut and learned to stop caring about anyone except me. They can’t make you cry when you don’t give a shit about them or their opinions. You can only be hurt by the ones you love. (Aiden)”
“I’m a professional bodyguard. (Leta)
Yeah, right. (Aiden)
Nope. All true. I know seventy-two ways to kill a man and sixty-nine of them look like an accident. (Leta)”
“I marvel at the fact you’ve lived to your age and no one’s taken those rose-colored glasses and shoved them up your ass. (Aiden)”
“Because people are ever willing to believe the negative over the positive. It’s easier for you to think me corrupt and evil than it is for you to see me for what I really am. No one wants to believe that some people are willing to help others out of the goodness of their hearts because they can’t stand to see someone suffer. So few people are altruistic that they can’t understand or conceive that anyone else in the world could ever put someone else’s good above their own. (Leta)”
“The way to overcome the angry man is with gentleness, the evil man goodness, the miser with generosity, and the liar with truth. (Indian proverb)
It sounds good, doesn’t it? If only people and life were that effing easy. Trust me, it takes more than a friendly biscuit to tame a hungry lion. And it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Then it’s war. (Savitar)”
“It’s not the pain that’s inflicted on us by others that destroys us. It’s the pain we let inside our hearts that does that. Don’t let the human’s anger become yours. It can drive you mad if you do. (M'Adoc)”
“I don’t want your lying kindness. Sure, you’ll smile and be so sweet to me that I’ll trust you, but the minute I don’t give you everything you want the instant you demand it, you’ll turn on me and try to crush me. You’re just like everyone else in the world. No one matters but you. (Aiden)”
“Note to self on waking. Lay off the beer on an empty stomach. This dream is even more screwed up than the time I had a donkey and a corkscrew. (Aiden)
Donkey and a corkscrew? (Leta)
I don’t know you well enough to fill you in on those details. (Aiden)”
“Everyone who’s ever been jealous because it’s my face in the magazines and not theirs. Every person who can’t believe or accept that someone can reach my level of success without being a total prick. Trust me, it’s not the lies that hurt people. It’s the willingness of everyone else to believe them. And then there are those who come out of the woodwork to back your accuser because it gives them the spotlight for three seconds. They can’t stand the fact that you’ve risen above your past and that they have no excuse for never rising above theirs. In their minds, you need to be taken down a notch and they need to be raised a few, off the lies they tell about you. Because in the end, they know you, they’ve seen the real you, and by backing your accusers, they make other people think that maybe they were close to you – at least that’s what they claim. It’s a sick world and I’m disgusted with it. (Aiden)”
“What good was owning the world when he’d have no choice except to defend himself against every person in it? Personally, he’d rather be a beggar with one true friend than a prince surrounded by two-faced assassins.’ (Aiden)”
“I’d rather have my eyes gouged out. (Urian)
If I do that, can the Simi eat them? (Simi)
You have to share if you do! (Xirena)”
“Look, I admit you seem like a decent person. For all I know you stop and move turtles out of the road whenever you see one to keep someone from running it over. But this turtle is tired of having its guts spattered on the pavement while other people drive right over him. I just want to scrape myself up and hide in the woods, okay? (Aiden)”
“I don’t play with cheaters and I don’t care if you are three seconds older than me, you don’t tell me what to do. I’m not your bitch, boy.
Then stop acting like one. Whoever heard of Fear being a cry-baby.
The same people who made Dread a cheater. (Phobos)
Oh, go cry to mama, you nancy-boy. (Deimos)”
“Jealousy can’t sour someone to this extreme, can it? (Aiden)
It can and it does. Believe me. I’ve seen a lot worse than this in my billion or so years of existence – the first murder man committed was one brother against the other for no other reason than that one petty emotion. Jealousy turns to hatred which then turns to poison. It infects and it destroys until it eats someone alive. (Deimos)”
“If you betray me, Leta…Kill me. Be kind and don’t let me live in the shadow of your cruelty. I can’t take another blow like that. I’m not that strong. (Aiden)”
“I don’t like being here with these people and animals. I’m going to retire, but remember, courage is doing what we know is dangerous. It’s risking our safety for a chance at something better. Don’t let your fears shape your reality because no matter how cautious you are, someone or something always sneaks in the back door to manifest that fear. Better to face it and defeat it than to let it attack you unawares. (Maxis)”
“Well, then, if I admit I know who you are and really couldn’t care less will that assuage your damaged manhood enough that we can get past this and move on to something that ends with your giving me a sandwich? (Leta)”
“Why did you leave? (Aiden)
I took care of the person harassing him. Threat gone. Job eliminated. Anything else you want to know? Dental records, fingerprints? Retinal scan? (Leta)
Urine sample would work. (Aiden)
What cup you want me to use? (Leta)
Does anything faze you? (Aiden)
I fight people for a living. Do you honestly think peeing in a cup is going to frighten me? (Leta)”
“I can’t believe you cheated! (Phobos)
I can’t believe you didn’t know it. Man, what kind of god are you? I never knew stupidity had a divine representative. Guess I was wrong, huh? (Deimos)”
“I’m an executioner, Leta, hence my Demon nickname. They send me in to take the heads off people and gods who’ve stepped over the line, usually only because someone has PMS. You want justice, Themis’s office is down the hall on the left. You want death and dismemberment, I’m your man…or rather god. (Deimos)”
“I know you did. It’s just that I wanted to see you for a few minutes and you were asleep. I didn’t want to disturb you. (Leta)
So you slept at my feet like a puppy? No offense, but that’s creepy as hell. Next thing I know, you’ll be trying on my clothes and sleeping in my bed. (Aiden)”
“But one thing I realized with my brother is that you can’t toss your pearls before the swine. I think that’s why my mother insisted you give anonymously. The instant anyone sees that you’re kind and giving, they immediately take advantage of it. They seem to mistake kindness for weakness and giving for stupidity. (Aiden)”
“Humans are capable of so much creativity and goodness and at the same time they are destructive and cruel. (Leta)”
“It’s as if your kind needs adversity in order to achieve. (Leta)
No, we don’t. That’s just a lie people tell themselves to feel better about all the people who kick them in their teeth when it’s just as easy to help a man up as it is to knock him to the ground. That’s why I’ve withdrawn from this world. I don’t want to have to watch my back all the time and I’m tired of trying to figure out if the loyalty someone professes is real and true, or just another lie that will crumble the instant they taste jealousy. (Aiden)”
“How are you in the profession of protecting people without knowing who I am? I’ve been told I have one of the most recognizable faces in the world. (Aiden)
Wow…just out of curiosity, when you go to bed at night, do you find yourself ousted off the mattress by that ego? (Leta)”
“I’ve asked myself that a thousand times over and I’m no closer to an answer now than I was when it began. I think that’s why I always loved movies so much. In a movie, everything has to make sense. The characters always have to have motivation. Good, solid motivation for everything they do. They can’t be a dickhead without reason. If someone turns on a character, they have to have a hardcore, believable reason for it. Unfortunately, in real life you don’t. People turn on each other for anything from catching a constipated look on your face when you had gas and thinking it was directed at them, to not liking the brand of shoes you’re wearing. People are sick. (Aiden)”
“Because I have nothing else to live for. You told me of your brother’s betrayal. Imagine your own father calling out his hounds to kill your infant daughter and husband. Imagine what it was like to watch them die and then be taken and punished for something you didn’t do. To be stripped of your dignity and emotions because your father was embarrassed by a stupid, insignificant dream he’d had and he blamed everyone who walks in the dreams for it. You feel your pain, Aiden. I feel mine. (Leta)”
“...It’s not the lies that hurt people. It’s the willingness of everyone else to believe them..."
Aiden, Upon the Midnight Clear by Sherrilyn Kenyon”
“No. He’s the personification of human fear. (Leta)
Oh, goody. Just what I wanted to add to my dream. Should we invite him over for tea? (Aiden)”
“ Poor little old human beings – they’re jerked into this world without having any idea where they came from or what it is they are supposed to do, or how long they have to do it in. Or where they are gonna wind up after that. But bless their hearts, most of them wake up every morning and keep on trying to make some sense out of it. Why, you can’t help but love them, can you? I just wonder why more of them aren’t as crazy as betsy bugs. ”
Aunt Elner, 1978”
“Who lit the fuse on your tampon?”
“squeaks, and I know she’s grinding her hips into it. I let her do this for another ninety seconds”
“I love you. I've never met anyone that affects me the way you do. I feel like I could conguer the world, bench press a bus, and run a marathon when I'm with you. You make me feel alive and so happy I can't even think straight.”
“And all those who have known, they insist: “Know thyself!” Buddha, Jesus, Socrates, they go on insisting, “Know thyself!” The whole insistence of religion is to know thyself.”
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