01UndatedLove is a luxury.""No. Love is an element."An element. Like air to breathe, earth to stand on.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
02UndatedShe craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
03UndatedIt was brave," countered Issa. "It was rare. It was love, and it was beautiful.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
04UndatedI...I sang," she whispered, "if that matters," and Karou felt her heart pulled to pieces. This Misbegotten warrior, fiercest of them all, had crouched in an icy stream bed to sing a chimera soul into her canteen, because she hadn't known what else to do.The singing wouldn't have mattered, but she wasn't going to tell Liraz that. If Ziri's soul was in that canteen, Karou would happily learn whatever song Liraz had sung and make it part of her resurrection ritual forever, just so that the angel would never feel that she'd been foolish.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
05UndatedI'm afraid they're in love," he said, concerned. "They don't want to leave you." He lifted one hand from her waist to gently brush a pair from her neck, where their wings fanned against her jaw. Melancholy, he said, "I know just how they feel.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
06UndatedI know it's not easy for you, living this life, but try to remember, always try to remember, you're not the only one with troubles.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
07UndatedBrimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
08UndatedIt's not like there's a law against flying.""Yes there is. The law of gravity.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
09UndatedAnyone who takes on my sister," he had postured once, all puffed-out bravado, "will have to deal with ...my sister." And then he'd dived behind her and cowered.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
10UndatedHappiness. It was the place where passion, with all its dazzle and drumbeat, met something softer: homecoming and safety and pure sunbeam comfort. It was all those things, intertwined with the heat and the thrill, and it was as bright within her as a swallowed star.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
11UndatedHappiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won--some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it--but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble and ordinary as your gear and supplies.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
12UndatedShe'd spoken of their happiness as though it were an undeniable fact, no matter what happened--apart from everything else and not subject to it. It was a new idea for him, that happiness wasn't a mystical place to be reached or won--some bright terrain beyond the boundary of misery, a paradise waiting for them to find it--but something to carry doggedly with you through everything, as humble and ordinary as your gear and supplies. Food, weapons, happiness.With hope that the weapons could in time vanish from the picture.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
13UndatedAnd they were quiet but their blood and nerves and butterflies were not—they were rampantly alive, rushing and thrumming in a wild and perfect melody, matched note for note.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
14UndatedHope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
16UndatedHe'd sooner die trying to hold the world on his shoulders than running away. Better always to run toward. And so he did.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
17UndatedHe danced with the sky instead, and the sky dropped him like a rotten plum.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
18UndatedVengeance ought to be spoken through gritted teeth, spittle flying, the cords of one's soul so entangled in it that you can't let it go, even if you try. If you feel it--if you really feel it--then you speak it like it's a still-beating heart clenched in your fist and there's blood running down your arm, dripping off your elbow, and you can't let go.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
19UndatedI was going to say the beginning is the good part, when it's all sparks and sparkles, before they are inevitably unmasked as assholes.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
20UndatedThere was only present, and it was infinite. The past and the future were just blinders we wore so that infinity wouldn't drive us mad.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
21UndatedBe a Samurai.Because you just never know what's behind the freaking sky.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
23UndatedI love bookshelves, and stacks of books, spines, typography, and the feel of pages between my fingertips. I love bookmarks, and old bindings, and stars in margins next to beautiful passages. I love exuberant underlinings that recall to me a swoon of language-love from a long-ago reading, something I hoped to remember. I love book plates, and inscriptions in gifts from loved ones, I love author signatures, and I love books sitting around reminding me of them, being present in my life, being. I love books. Not just for what they contain. I love them as objects too, as ever-present reminders of what they contain, and because they are beautiful. They are one of my favorite things in life, really at the tiptop of the list, easily my favorite inanimate things in existence, and ... I am just not cottoning on to this idea of making them ... not exist anymore. Making them cease to take up space in the world, in my life? No, please do not take away the physical reality of my books.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
24UndatedDon't look at me like that," said Ruza."Like what?""Like I'm a beautiful book you're about to open and plunder with your greedy mad eyes.Laini Taylor / quote ↗
