"To learn the true value of something, all you had to do was lose it."
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"There were worse definitions of love than someone who could make you laugh as the world fell apart. Even once."
“Sometimes at night the darkness and silence weigh upon me… We need to live in a state of suspended animation like a work of art, in a state of enchantment. We have to succeed in loving so greatly that we live outside of time, detached.”
He finally unlatched his teeth from her throat and then staggered as he tried to stand, nearly falling backwards. “Madonna mia, how much does this woman drink?” he slurred. “Opium too. There are more toxins in her blood than in a Parisian sewer.”
“We Byzantines love circles. Time, the moon, arguments, and, most of all, coins. All good things are circular.”
pickI absolutely loved this book. It was unlike anything else I have ever read. Usually I have a hard time with being immersed in fantasy worlds like this. Unusual names, terms and places are sometimes too much work for me to figure out and get in the way of enjoying the story. Not here. The characters were so richly developed and compelling that I gladly immersed myself in this magical story. I look forward to many more.
“If there is one thing I have learned from both our trades, it is that we must always be in the business of forgiveness, lest we become consumed by our anger.”
“Then perhaps we should carve a world one day where the strength lies in who you are, rather than in what they expect you to be.”
I would much rather remain undetected in the shadows than saunter out into the light, with my flaws out for all to see.
Imprisonment, I might interrupt myself to say, does not merely produce a feeling of being alone. Your entire history of loneliness returns to you piece by piece, until the cell is a castle of your mental misery. The memories of solitude flood over all other thoughts of the present or the future. You are only yourself. That is the world; no poet of the penal system could devise anything harsher than that.
“Mr. Clark, the most dangerous temptation in life is to forget to tend to your own business—you must learn to respect yourself enough to preserve your own interests. If pursuing the causes of others—even in charity—prevents your own happiness, you will be left with nothing.
Ratiocination. NOUN. The act of deliberate, calculated reasoning through the imagination and spirit; the intimate observation and forecasting of the complexities in human activity, especially the frequent simplicity in that activity. Not interchangeable with mere “calculus” or “logic.”
A hackney cab driver told me that during that uprising he saw one of these villains...yell, “Je suis bien vengé!” and remove 15 or 16 human tongues from his pockets. He tossed them into the air before dying, and they landed on the shoulders and hats of the police, and even in one policeman‘s mouth.
He was wildly red all over—his hair, his brow, his irritated, picked skin.
pickLoved this captivating story of a young girl coming to terms with who she is and what family really means. Hoping for a sequel.
“This is over four hundred years of my family,” I say. “And these witches are pissed.”
“Why‘s it always the heart or the eye of something?” Rishi asks. “You notice that? There are so many body parts that don‘t get enough love, like earlobes and belly buttons.”
"...and his youngest sister, Henrietta, lived to a great age, also beside the sea, with a vast collection of cats--having previously traveled around England carrying a portable stove that allowed her to cook her beloved sausages in the privacy of her various bedrooms."
